via Facebook
Wannabe "Jackass" Andy Ray Harris, 31, pleaded not guilty to aggravated cruelty yesterday in a Tooele, Utah court. He was charged with the "class A" misdemeanor after PETA forwarded a link to a video on Facebook which appears to show Harris eating a live rat to the City Attorney’s Office.
"Seen jackass the movie we’ve got it at Spencers Arts," reads the grammatically creative caption accompanying the video. Spencer Arts is a tattoo and piercing parlor in Tooele. Harris, reportedly recognized by police from their previous interactions, himself has tattoos aplenty.
Tattoos, of course, no way indicate a predisposition for animal cruelty, as evidenced by the fine people of Rescue Ink. The graphic video, which shows Harris dropping a live 2- to 3-inch hairless baby rat in his mouth and chewing dramatically while he's cheered on by others, is pretty much all the indication you — or the court — needs.
The attorney for Harris "asked for more time to explore a couple of motions he was considering," the Deseret News reports, and a pretrial conference was scheduled for July 19.
Outside the court, neither Harris or his mother had comment for the media, though the newspaper story indicates that the baby rat was allegedly set to be fed to a pet snake. Snakes are not known masticators, and it remains unclear whether the reptile would've videotaped the meal and posted it on Facebook.
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