Man sentenced to 6 months for stealing black swan

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A man has been sentenced to six months in prison for larceny after he was found guilty of stealing and slaughtering a black swan at a park in Xuhui District in Shanghai in April this year, according to the district’s court on Thursday.

Surveillance camera /Photo from Kankan News

Together with the sentence, the 30-year-old man, only exposed with his surname of Zhou, was also fined 1,000 yuan (around 152 US dollars) as compensation for the loss of the park. The court further explained that the slaughtered swan was not in the country’s rare and engendered animal category so the man had faced a charge of larceny only.

Zhou, together with his friends came to Xujiahui Park, an open green space in downtown Shanghai on April 20 at midnight. Zhou caught the black swan in the park’s lake and took it away when the park’s patrol left the area.

Zhou confessed to the police officers during an interrogation at Xujiahui Police Station that he finally turned part of the swan to a dish when finding the swan dead on his way back home, and discarded the remaining.

The Xujiahui Police put Zhou in custody after investigation and filed an application to Shanghai Detecting Center for Wildlife for species identification in May. The result confirmed that the swan was neither in the national list of endangered and protected species nor in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Xujiahui Park /Photo from Kankan News

The court, on Thursday, rendered the verdict that Zhou’s behavior belonged to larceny and fined him after referring to the identification and the appraisal from the city’s pricing authority which rated the swan at 1,666 yuan (approximately 254 US Dollars).

Zhou is in court. /Weibo Photo

However, some netizens apparently feel hard to accept the ruling, most of whom thought it was too light for the man.

“Shanghai’s law is really lenient. No wonder the city is out of order,” @OSKINWangdayang expressed his disagreement on Sina Weibo.

“The punishment is too light. I thought he should have been imprisoned for three to five years,” commented @Sheyingshixuxiaozou.

According to the country’s criminal law, offenders who steal public or personal property shall be sentenced to imprisonment no more than three years or be fined.

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