Unbiased presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted a video on social media during which he admitted to discarding a lifeless bear cub in New York’s Central Park in 2014.
The video, posted on his X account on Sunday, reveals him alongside US comic Roseanne Barr describing the weird circumstances main as much as the occasions that baffled New Yorkers 10 years in the past.
Mr. Kennedy stated that whereas he was driving outdoors town, a girl struck and killed the bear together with her automotive and that he had positioned it in his van with the intention of skinning the animal for its meat.
He shared the anecdote when The New Yorker printed a narrative in regards to the incident on Monday.
in keeping with new yorker storiesIn an article printed on Monday morning, Mr. Kennedy was “thrilled” to find the bear whereas on a falconry outing within the Hudson Valley countryside north of New York Metropolis.
One of many photos within the article confirmed Mr. Kennedy making a face as he put his hand into the lifeless bear’s bloody mouth. He loaded the bear into the again seat of the automotive.
The journal quoted an nameless particular person accustomed to Mr. Kennedy’s dealing with of the bear carcass in Central Park as saying that Mr. Kennedy “thought it will be humorous to make it appear to be an errant bicycle owner” encountered the animal.
The outline was broadly just like one supplied by Mr. Kennedy on Sunday.
Within the movie, Mr. Kennedy, sitting at a desk along with his sleeves rolled up, tells Ms. Barr that 10 years in the past he was driving to satisfy a gaggle of individuals going falcon searching close to Goshen, N.Y., when the bear was killed.
“I’ll pores and skin the bear – it is in actually good situation – and I’ll put the meat within the freezer,” he stated. “Here is what you are able to do in New York state: put a bear tag on a roadkill bear.”
New York State does permit individuals to seize bears killed on the street, however the regulation requires individuals to inform regulation enforcement or the state’s Division of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to acquire such a tag.
Mr. Kennedy doesn’t seem to have completed so.
As an alternative, he stated he continued attending the falconry, which lasted into the evening, after which had dinner at Peter Luger’s Steakhouse in New York Metropolis, about 75 miles (121 kilometers) south of Goshen.
“By the top of dinner, it was getting very late and I spotted I could not go house,” Mr. Kennedy stated. “I needed to go to the airport and the bear was in my automotive and I did not wish to go away the bear within the automotive as a result of that will be unhealthy.”
That is when it occurred to him, he stated, that there had been a collection of bicycle accidents in New York and that he had an previous bicycle on board.
He instructed Ms. Barr about his thought to stage a bicycle accident with a bear carcass in Central Park, and several other drunks he was with thought it was a good suggestion. He emphasised that he didn’t drink.
“So we did it and we thought it will be attention-grabbing to anybody who finds it or one thing,” he stated.
“The subsequent day… it was on each TV station. It was on the entrance web page of each newspaper, and I turned on the TV and noticed a mile of yellow tape and 20 police automobiles and helicopters flying, and I used to be like, ‘Oh my God. What, what did I do?
He then famous {that a} fact-checker from The New Yorker known as him to ask if he was concerned in dumping the bear carcass, which appeared to immediate him to submit the footage.
The bear’s carcass was reportedly found by a girl strolling her canine. Story written by The New York Times in 2014. Reviews say it was positioned underneath some bushes and an deserted bicycle.
The article acknowledged that the police animal cruelty unit was investigating the demise, and the New York Metropolis Division of Setting concluded that the animal died in a “motorized vehicle collision,” not a bicycle accident.
The DEC instructed the BBC in an announcement that it had investigated the Central Park bear cub incident and decided that the bear died in a high-speed collision. The division stated it closed the investigation that yr resulting from “a scarcity of enough proof to find out whether or not a violation occurred.” It added that prices couldn’t be introduced over an incident that occurred greater than a yr in the past.
The Instances story was written by one other member of the Kennedy household, Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy. She didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark about her kin.
Mr. Kennedy’s confession comes as his presidential marketing campaign seems to be in hassle. Since Kamala Harris entered the Democratic race, his assist in polls has dropped to single digits.
His fundraising has struggled, forcing him to decelerate his marketing campaign in current weeks.
He insists he has no intention of ending his presidential marketing campaign.
