TEENAGER Lee Burden has been jailed for 90 days for killing a hedgehog by cooking it in a microwave oven.>

Hedgehog killer jailed for cruelty

Picture shows Lee Burden

TEENAGER Lee Burden has been jailed for 90 days for killing a hedgehog by cooking it in a microwave oven.

Burden, 18, committed the cruel prank in halls of residence at Rycotewood College, Thame. He was sentenced by Henley magistrates on Tuesday, after pleading guilty to causing unnecessary suffering to the animal.

The former mechanics student was expelled by Rycotewood College following the incident, and had been living with his parents in Kingsbury Road, Birmingham, while awaiting sentencing.

Burden told the court how he found the hedgehog at the gates of the college as he returned from a drinking session with friends on June 2 last year. He claimed he was egged on by pals to carry the animal inside and put it in the microwave.

Robin Gates, prosecuting for the RSPCA, said fellow students had gone into the kitchen and seen smoke pouring out of the microwave. One of Burden's friends smelt burning and was sick.

A vet's statement to the court confirmed the animal would have suffered an agonising death in the microwave. The vet's report concluded: "This method of causing death would be intensely painful and distressing to the animal and, as such, in my opinion, constitutes unnecessary suffering."

The prosecution was one of the first to be brought under the recently-passed Wild Animals Protection Act, which is designed to prevent deliberate cruelty to wild animals.

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