Animal Rights Protestors Steal Fisherman’s Tilapia And Assault His Family [WATCH]

Photo: Michael Rupert Hayes (Wikimedia Commons)

Be careful when you go out fishing with your family and there’s protestors around. That’s a lesson one family unfortunately learned the hard way this past week.

St. Petersburg, Florida resident Bob Hope was fishing with his family in a local park when a group of activists showed up and harassed him. It started with an eight-year-old boy coming up and telling Hope that the four-pound tilapia he had just caught had feelings and asked Hope to release it back into the water. When he politely declined, the family was rushed by about a half dozen adults that began reiterating what the kid said.

As this happened, one of the protestors moved to throw the fish back in the lake. Hope’s mother put her foot on the sidewalk to protect the fish, but she was aggressively moved out of the way before the fish was thrown back in the water. Hope called 911 at this point and his mother began capturing footage on her phone, which you can see in the above video.

Police did arrive at the scene and confirmed the demonstrators were part of an animal liberation organization, but made no arrests. The reason given by the St. Petersburg Police in their statement was that “when the officer arrived, the protesters were already getting in their cars. The primary concern for the officer was to restore the peace and the officer didn’t witness any disorderly conduct or criminal activity.”

Meanwhile, the activists, who were part of Direct Action Everywhere, defended themselves as heroes, saying that, “If this animal was a dog or a cat, we would be labeled heroes, but because we saved a fish, everybody is trying to make us out to be monsters.”

Ironically, the “rescued” fish was actually an invasive species that was destroying local environments and bass populations, so Direct Action Everywhere did more harm than good with their over-the-top protest of a man just trying to fish.