Puppy-throwing girl sparks online outrage

Liveleak.com

A screengrab of a video apparently showing a young woman throwing puppies into a river.

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This post was originally published on Mashable.com

A video of a young girl in a red sweatshirt throwing several puppies into a river has caused a huge social media backlash on sites like 4chan, reddit and Facebook.

The backlash is similar to the one caused by the Cat Bin Lady, a woman who was caught on video throwing a cat into a garbage bin, and whose identity was quickly revealed by members of 4chan, an anarchic and anonymous message board.

Similarly, some members of 4chan and reddit started a campaign to find out the identity of the girl, while a Facebook group related to the incident has gathered more than 3000 members in a little more than a day.

Although the exact identities of the girl and the person behind the camera are unknown, the girl speaks Croatian in the video, and other inconclusive evidence suggests that she is resident of a city of Bugojno in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

According to threads on 4chan and reddit [Warning: strong language is used in the thread], the footage was filmed by the girl's brother, who uploaded the video to YouTube, but soon removed it. Faced with threats from 4chan, a person identifying himself as the girl's brother asked for help on the forum section of Croatian gaming site HCL.hr, arguing that these were stray puppies and that they had to do it to "protect their health".

However, due to the extreme cruelty captured in the video, in which the girl cheerily throws the puppies into the river - at one point asking, "Can it swim?" - the backlash has been extreme. Thousands of forum members have condemned the girl's acts and media outlets have described the act as "shocking" and "terrible".

Meanwhile, another interesting topic has been posted on reddit by an administrator of the site, asking for members to stop acting like "vigilantes and lynch mobs", and threatening to ban members who post anyone's private info on the site. "You are seriously messing with innocent people's lives and you have no right to do so," the message concludes.

The video can be viewed on the liveleak.com website.

Mashable.com is the world's largest blog focused exclusively on social media news.

- Mashable.com