A neighborhood dispute that started between the borders of the countryside and culminated in a violent gesture lands in the courtrooms 5 years after the incident. A 40-year-old resident of Zero Branco, a small municipality in the province of Treviso, will have to appear before the judge of the Court of Treviso on January 27, 2027 to answer for the killing of the rooster belonging to his 72-year-old neighbor. The facts contested by the Prosecutor’s Office date back to 21 September 2021, the day on which the elderly owner found the lifeless bird inside his courtyard.
What initially seemed like a sudden death soon revealed a violent nature: wounds compatible with a bullet fired from a compressed air rifle were found on the animal’s body. According to the investigators, the motive for the attack should be sought in the exasperation caused by the morning song of the bird, judged excessively noisy at the first light of dawn, within a relationship between neighbors already deteriorated by old discussions related to the limits of their respective properties.
The images of the cameras and the refusal of the criminal decree
The dynamics of the episode were reconstructed by the recordings of the video surveillance system installed along the perimeter of the victim’s home. Checking the videos after the discovery, the seventy-two-year-old identified the silhouette of a man approaching the dividing fence, taking up the weapon, aiming towards the inside of the garden and firing. The images delivered to the police at the local station led to the opening of the investigation and formal charges for animal cruelty, a crime governed by article 544-ter of the Criminal Code for acting cruelly and unnecessarily.
The accused has always denied any involvement, claiming that the figure filmed by the security system is not clear enough to guarantee a certain identification. The man even rejected the proposal to close the proceedings through a criminal conviction decree which provided for the payment of a fine of 6,750 euros instead of 3 months of detention. For his part, the owner of the animal has joined the civil action, claiming compensation of more than 6,000 euros while awaiting the winter hearing in which the last witnesses for the prosecution will be heard.
