Mother and son 'drowned hamster after misdiagnosing it'

A mother and son drowned their pet hamster in a bath to ‘put it out of its misery’. The pair wrongly thought Speedy’s life had been blighted by ringworm, so Karen and Jay Williams decided to put the animal down themselves.

Jay, 21, forced it underwater but when the hamster didn’t die, his mother Karen, 45, put a plastic bottle over its head and submerged it again. RSPCA inspectors found Speedy’s body when they were called to the house following reports of a horse being kept in the back garden.

The animal, called Rolo, had been bought for Jay by his mother but the pair soon realised they couldn’t look after him in their tiny back yard in Newcastle. While an inspector was talking to Jay he confessed to drowning the hamster a few days earlier.



The pair pleaded guilty to causing unnecessary suffering to an animal at an earlier hearing at Newcastle magistrates court.

Yesterday they were sentenced to a 12-month community order with 60 hours of unpaid work each. They were also ordered to pay £50 each towards investigation costs and were banned from keeping animals for five years. Judith Curry, prosecuting, said: ‘The hamster was exhumed and found to have died from drowning. But it also had severe bruising underneath. It is very likely that the animal had been struggling to get air.’

Bert Gibson, defending, said: ‘There was no malicious intent. They were under the deeply wrong impression the hamster had an incurable disease.’