The victim said that a man burst into his apartment. When the victim asked, “Why are you carrying a weasel?” police said the attacker said, “It’s not a weasel, it’s a marten,” then punched him in the nose and fled.
Neither man was right. Authorities say the carcass was a mink.
Our good friends over at Lowering the Bar give us the legal lowdown on how the charges shake out:
He appears to have been charged only with burglary (unlawful entry with intent to commit a crime), not assault (throwing a mink) and/or battery (hitting somebody with it, or with his fist), and if that’s true then wielding a mammal of whatever species would not have been an element of the crime. Yet the defense attorney was quoted as saying that his client was acquitted because the “prosecution failed to prove a link to the mink.” I guess we’ll never know the truth.
A jury of his peers(?) acquitted the man, but apprently never asked the most interesting question to us here at Crime HQ: what, exactly, was he doing with the furry fury, which court records say Watkins admitted finding along the road?