Norwalk Hospital Employees Seen Using Rock To Kill Gopher In Parking Lot
NORWALK (CBSLA) — Video posted recently to social media shows two men pestering a gopher before killing it with a boulder in a parking lot of a local hospital.
The incident happened in the parking lot at the Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, according to an employee who shared the video with KCAL9 on the condition of anonymity, and was posted to SnapChat with the text, "It's a hard job, it's not for everyone."
The employee said he was outraged by what he saw his coworkers doing, and he is not the only one.
"No animal should be treated like that," Nicholas Dilello, a resident of Norwalk, said. "That's not right for them. They can't defend themselves."
Natalie Betanzos, who also lives in Norwalk, said the person shouldn't have recorded the video.
And while there's a lot of wildlife at the hospital, one man said the animals can be handled in a more humane way.
"If they have a rodent problem with the gophers, there's other ways to get rid of them — trap boxes to release them in the wild or get them off the property," Nelson Arana, a Norwalk resident, said. "There are other ways to get rid of them instead of just smashing them with a rock or a boulder.
It's unclear whether this was an isolated incident. The hospital said it will investigate the matter.
