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Man sent to prison for fatally shooting elephant seal Jami Ganz
A Utah man will serve three months in prison for the 2019 fatal shooting of a northern elephant seal in California.
Prosecutors said Jordan Gerbich, 30, was sentenced Monday for killing the animal while it rested on a San Simeon-area beach, NBC News reports.
He pleaded guilty in December to one count of illegally taking a marine mammal, according to a release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office Central District of California.
Gerbich was living in The Golden State when he shot the seal in the head, using a handgun, on Sept. 28, 2019 after a drunken friend ordered him to kill an animal “as a kind of grotesque test,” his federal public defender wrote in a court document prior to sentencing, according to NBC.
April 14, 2021
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(NEW YORK) A man has been sentenced to three months in federal prison after shooting an elephant seal in the head with a handgun while it rested peacefully on a California beach.
The incident originally occurred on Sept. 28, 2019, when 30-year-old Jordan Gerbich from Santa Maria, California drove to an elephant seal viewing area near the Piedras Blancas Marine Reserve and Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary with a .45 caliber pistol and a flashlight.
Gerbich subsequently approached one of the elephant seals as the animal was resting on the beach and killed it by shooting it directly in the head with a single gunshot, according to a statement from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.