A Hawaiian teenager is facing up to 10 years in prison after he and pal stole a woman’s pet pig and slaughtered it to cheat their way into a $1,000 hunting contest prize.
Jayden Jarnesky-Magana, 19, and accomplice Krys Ryan Saito-Carino, 20, allegedly snatched “Eddie” from Sarah Haynes’ Maui farm last May and then filmed their dogs viciously attacking the poor creature in a sham hunting video they posted on social media.
They proceeded to kill and gut Eddie and entered him at the last minute in a local “biggest pig” hunting contest — but the hunters there became suspicious after noting that the pig had been neutered and was much heavier than the typical wild pigs entered into the contest.
“Nobody believed him,” Haynes told KHON2.
Eddie was even too heavy for the two men to carry from their truck to the weigh-scale, Haynes said, but they ended up walking away with the $1,000 prize money for the biggest pig hunted.
Jarnesky-Magana and Saito-Carino were both arrested and charged in August with animal cruelty later last year following a police investigation, Maui Now reported.
In January Jarnesky-Magana changed his plea from not guilty to no contest and is scheduled to be sentenced on Wednesday on felony counts of first-degree animal cruelty and livestock theft — which each carry a five-year max sentence.
Saito-Carino, is expected to also change his plea to no contest on Wednesday, according to KOHN2.
Haynes has organized a rally outside of the Wailuku courthouse to raise awareness about animal cruelty.
“Eddie was super friendly,” Haynes said. “Little kids could hug him, you know, he’d sit. You could get him to bark like a dog. I mean, he was just the most adorable, sweet, gentle soul.”
She had adopted the pig several years ago and brought him to her Kitty Charm Farm in Haiku after he was found running around Kihei with scars and rope burns, presumably because he was used to train hunting dogs.
“And you know, his life started with cruelty, and I was determined to make that go away for life. And, unfortunately it ended the same way it started, you know, with hunting dogs.”
“I don’t want to ruin anybody’s life and I don’t think there’s any possibility of them getting the 10 years, but what I would like to see, I would like to see a punishment,” he added.
“This wasn’t an innocent mistake, this wasn’t confusion about the law. This was a planned attack on my pet,” she added.
