NEW YORK - A man who told police he bit the head off a rooster accepted a prosecution offer Monday to drop the case if he is not rearrested within the next six months.
Humberto Rodriguez was arrested June 29, 2006, and charged with animal cruelty after a neighbor spotted the rooster's headless torso on the fire escape outside his Manhattan apartment and called the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
ASPCA spokesman Joe Pentangelo said after Rodriguez' arrest that the defendant admitted to ASPCA police that he bit his bird, which a friend had given him about six months earlier. The rooster's head was never found.
A complaint filed in Manhattan Criminal Court at Rodriguez' arraignment quoted him as telling the ASPCA officer, "I killed the rooster. I bit the head off. I bit the rooster's neck. He died, and then I cut its head off with a knife."
Pentangelo said the rooster also had two broken wings.
Rodriguez told the ASPCA's investigators that he committed the foul deed because the rooster had injured a pet pigeon he kept in the apartment, Pentangelo said.
The deal that Rodriguez accepted, called adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, means he does not have to enter a guilty or not guilty plea and if he is not arrested within the next six months his case will be dismissed.
Rodriguez, 52, faced up to a year in jail if convicted after trial.
His Legal Aid lawyer, Christine Bella, did not answer her telephone Thursday evening.
It's illegal to possess a live rooster in the city, the ASPCA said.
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