Begrudged credit where due

Or perhaps not so much credit as lessening the disgrace. On Thursday I blogged about Mowgli the cat, who was caught on a pub's CCTV being swung around by the tail apparently for no better reason than it amused the little prick who doing it. I also expressed a hope that said prick would be caught and convicted, and also that he'd die of face cancer that started with his eyes. In the interim the publicity made CCTV useful for a change and plenty of people identified the person responsible, probably giving his brother a bit of a shock because he drinks in the same pub.

The suspect’s brother told The Daily Telegraph that he only heard about the incident when he went for a drink in the Camden Arms late on Thursday.
The man, who lives in Margate, said after looking at the CCTV footage: "If it's him, then he's an idiot but I don't know. I can't get hold of him or my parents. I don't know where he is."

How dumb do you have to be? Seriously, to do this kind of thing outside your brother's watering hole, under the eye of a CCTV camera (which is clear enough to show up on Google Streetview and must have been pretty obvious from the real street), and when you live nearby, how daft do you have to be?

So the police and RSPCA were able to release PRs to the effect that they knew the name of the person responsible and he'd make it a hell of a lot easier if he just showed up at the local nick. And restoring a little credit to himself that's what he did.

Just hours after the 20 year-old was urged to hand himself in, Richards presented himself to Margate police station shortly after 9am on Friday.
He was accompanied by his solicitor after RSCPA inspectors and police officers failed to find him at his home address, just around the corner from where the incident occured.

That he's shown the stones to hand himself in I'll retract what I said about hoping he dies of face cancer. Instead I hope he'll carry on the same way and take responsibility for his actions. According to The Daily Telegraph the maximum penalty for animal cruelty is six months and/or a £20,000 fine, though I doubt he'll get anywhere near that. But as JuliaM said in the comments at the earlier post, some law enforcement agencies look at needless animal cruelty as a possible pointer to being a psycho so I'd also hope that in addition to any fine or jail (unlikely) the court asks for a neck up check up. If he's likely to one day graduate to swinging children around by the head you wouldn't want to blow the opportunity to find out now.

In any event it looks like something vaguely resembling justice will be done, and unfortunately that's about the best possible outcome. Because even though the culprit has been identified, and even if he's then convicted, and even learns his lesson and becomes a model citizen for the rest of his life, you can't explain any of that to Mowgli.