California man avoids prison after attack on tortoise in 2021
CBSN
A Northern California man avoided prison time Friday after he drunkenly trespassed at a preschool last year and attacked a pet tortoise named Michelangelo, The San Jose Mercury News reported.
The 42-year-old man was also linked to other break-ins at the East San Jose school, and stole thousands of dollars of items in the days before and after the attack on Michelangelo, a decades-old African sulcata, in January 2021.
The school's owner discovered Michelangelo bleeding last year after the attack, impaled in the shell with 6-inch (15-centimeter) shards from a wooden garden gate post. The man had also shoved a rake handle between the animal's head and leg and broke flood lamps and put the shattered glass on the tortoise's back, The Mercury News reported.
