Jeff Deminski’s confession: I’m a serial mercy killer

A former Rutgers campus police officer is still fighting to clear his name over something that began three years ago with a complaint against him regarding an injured bird.

In responding to this call, he apparently made a comment that the bird could be helped out with a mercy killing, either by quickly breaking its neck or by shooting it. This thought must have been so shocking and abhorrent to a Rutgers employee who overheard it that they filed a formal complaint against the officer.

Is it really such a terrible thing to consider putting an animal in pain out of its misery? Heck, I've done it three times. Yes, I'm a mercy serial killer. Here are my formal confessions.

Once I was coming off a train at Metro Park and as I rounded a corner alongside a busy road I saw a pigeon writhing in pain on the sidewalk. It must have been clipped by a car because half of it was missing. Disgusting, yes, I know. The poor thing was in its painful death throes. You didn't have to be a veterinarian to see there was no saving this little guy.

I couldn't just walk away and leave it experience another painful 15 minutes so yes, I confess, I helped it along. I'm a murderer. I found a piece of cardboard nearby. I placed it over the twisting, writhing bird, and with my foot I stomped it to its inevitable end. I can still remember the sad feeling under my foot of its body breaking.

Then were two more killings in Michigan. One was driving to work. I had just made a left turn onto a road to see very much the same kind of thing, except it was a squirrel. A car had hit it. But...not all of it. The back half was flattened like a pancake but the front half, head and front legs, were contorting in agony waiting to die. Again, no saving this thing.

So please spare me the comments of how what I did was wrong and how I should have taken it to a vet. You weren't there. You didn't see what I did. I went around the block to come back at this dying squirrel and ran over what remained of it. The only joy I took in it was knowing it was going to die anyway and that I was able to quickly end its pain.

Finally, in a parking lot I came across an unknown creature. It was fetal. Something that looked to be born far premature and abandoned by its mother on the hot surface of this parking lot. The mother was following her instinct, knowing this creature couldn't survive. Whatever it was, it was not even a baby yet. It was only half formed and survival was out of the question. I used a piece of cardboard and my foot as I did with the pigeon.

What I did were acts of kindness. I don't know how far gone the bird in the Rutgers case was, but I imagine the officer's suggestion was meant in his mind as an act of kindness.

-Jeff Deminski

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