The impartial presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr won’t face New York state fees after admitting that he dumped a useless bear in Central Park in 2014.
“The New York state Division of Environmental Conservation (DEC) led the 2014 investigation and forensic evaluation into the Central Park bear cub and concluded the bear died from blunt-force trauma according to a high-speed collision,” the company mentioned on Monday, as information of Kennedy’s weird admission, made in a New Yorker profile, percolated by means of US media and politics.
Looking for to pre-empt the New Yorker piece, Kennedy informed the bear story in video posted to social media on Sunday.
Ten years in the past, the bear story briefly mystified New York Metropolis. On Monday, as proof of Kennedy’s claims, the New Yorker printed an image of him with the bear, his fingers in its bloodied mouth as he grimaced theatrically.
Had Kennedy admitted his prank on the time, he might have fallen afoul of a state regulation that “contains offenses resembling unlawful possession of a bear and not using a tag or allow and unlawful disposal of a bear, each of that are violation-level offenses sometimes topic to fines of as much as $250 for the primary offense”.
However, the DEC, mentioned: “the statute of limitations for these offenses is one 12 months; fees can’t be introduced for incidents that occurred a couple of 12 months in the past”.
Kennedy, subsequently, is within the clear.
In his video, he mentioned he and a few buddies discovered the bear whereas on a falconry expedition within the Hudson Valley.
“So I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him [actually her] at the back of my van,” Kennedy mentioned, “as a result of I used to be gonna pores and skin the bear. It was in superb situation and I used to be gonna put the meat in my fridge.”
However Kennedy mentioned he “needed to go to the airport, and the bear was in my automotive, and I didn’t wish to depart the bear within the automotive as a result of that might have been dangerous.”
Kennedy and his buddies determined to dump the bear in Central Park – and to make it appear like it had been hit by a motorcycle.
“I wasn’t ingesting, in fact, however individuals had been ingesting with me who thought this was a good suggestion,” Kennedy mentioned. “So we went and did that and we thought it might be amusing for whoever discovered it, or one thing.”
He was apprehensive, he mentioned, “as a result of my prints had been throughout that bike”. Ultimately, no offender or suspect was named.
In a a lot remarked-on coincidence, the New York Instances reporter who first wrote concerning the useless bear in 2014, Tatiana Schlossberg, is Kennedy’s cousin.
Each are members of a political dynasty. Kennedy, 70, is the son of Robert F Kennedy, the US lawyer basic and New York senator who was assassinated in Los Angeles in 1968. His uncle John F Kennedy, the thirty fifth president, was assassinated in Dallas in 1963.
Schlossberg’s mom is the late president’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy, the US ambassador to Australia.
Robert F Kennedy Jr’s impartial presidential marketing campaign has alarmed each Republican and Democratic operatives, over the query of whether or not he’ll syphon off voters attracted by his vaccine conspiracy theories and different offbeat positions.
However Kennedy has struggled to achieve poll entry and has seen assist stagnate. He has lately flirted with accepting a job from Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, regardless of texts despatched by Kennedy and quoted within the New Yorker profile which referred to Trump as “a horrible human being” and “in all probability a sociopath”.
The bear story was solely Kennedy’s newest weird headline. Earlier this 12 months, the Instances reported a declare {that a} parasitic worm had eaten a part of his mind.
On Tuesday, the Washington Put up printed a column from the attitude of “RFK Jr’s mind worm”. It insisted: “I had nothing to do with the bear!”
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