Man kills peacock

On Staten Island, it’s not every day a peacock comes strolling into a Burger King parking lot. Which is why one employee took a break to go get a closer look at it. Break time over, she went back to flipping burgers until hearing someone shout from outside, “I’m killing a vampire!” Checking on the commotion, the employee saw a man serving up a beating that would ultimately end the peacock’s life. So began a rather wild weekend for accused peacock-killer John N. Potts.

Uncertain witnesses and 32-year-old Potts’s slight build had police looking for a man in his late teens to early 20s in the peacock assault, which is why they didn’t charge Potts on animal cruelty counts when they arrested him for breaking into a neighbour’s home later that same day. Nor the following day, when he was nabbed for possession of marijuana. But on day three, when Potts threatened to introduce his stepfather’s face to a shovel, police came and took him into custody for keeps.

Potts’s arraignment has been postponed while he undergoes psychiatric evaluation. Potts’s mother says her son is schizophrenic and “should be staying on his medications.”

by Scott Saxon