SURPRISE, AZ — A 20-year-old man was arrested after allegedly hitting a javelina with a baseball bat.
Police were alerted to the incident by someone who had seen a video on social media of the incident.
Officials say the video shows a vehicle in a residential area, near Bullard Avenue and Waddell Road, stopped in the roadway facing a javelina.
The video then shows Roger Henry Alexander, a collegiate baseball player, wearing baseball batting gloves, approaching the javelina, and hitting it across the head with a baseball bat. The force caused the animal to lift off its feet.
The person in the video is then seen turning to the camera and laughing and smiling, according to court documents.
The documents also state, Alexander told authorities during a post-arrest, post-miranda interview that he "observed what I knew to be a wild pig or javelina and was under the understanding they are considered a nuisance animal, so I did not think it mattered."
Alexander has been booked on one felony count of animal cruelty and one misdemeanor count of intentional unnecessary physical injury to an animal.
This incident remains under investigation.
