Good and bad, the Web focuses on 'puppy thrower' as 'apology' appears, vanishes

The power of the Internet is still being shown in the attempts to track down the "puppy throwing girl," the one who threw a number of live puppies into a river, on camera, in a horrific video. While assisting the authorities in finding the young girl is one thing, the palpable hatred exuded by some as well as possible misidentifications are frightening.

For one, it appears the preliminary ID of one Katja Puschnik as the perpetrator of the act is probably incorrect. It's been reported that Puschnik lives in Germany, and analysis of the original video has shown her to be speaking Croatian with a strong Bosnian accent. It's possible the video was old, and that Puschnik has since moved to Germany, but it's unclear if that's the case.

In fact, a purported apology video appeared on YouTube on Wednesday, one supposedly from Katja Puschnik. That video has since been removed (though you can still see an image from it above), but most felt it was a hoax video.

Therein lies the positive and negative power we are seeing. While in the earlier case of Mary Bale, the so-called "Cat Bin Woman," who put a cat into a trash bin where it sat for 15 hours until its owner found it, the ID was correct, what if in this case the ID is wrong? Will some woman named Katja Puschnik be physically harmed because of it?

There actually exists a Facebook Group named "Kill the Puppy Throwing Girl" at the time of this writing. A more moderate Group is "Find the girl throwing puppies in the river!!!!!"

Meanwhile, while we have heard of a $2,000 reward by PETA in this case, Transformers director Michael Bay has a better offer for information: $50,000. According to Gawker, on his own website, Bay said,

There is a disturbing video going around the news outlets. It's a video of blonde young woman in a red sweatshirt casually tossing squealing puppies into the fast-moving river one by one.

Michael Bay has informed me that he is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and successful prosecution of the woman in the red sweatshirt and the person who shot this act of cruelty.

The post has since been removed. Since the email address that tips were to be sent to was webmaster@michaelbay.com, perhaps the webmaster himself overstepped his bounds. That probably means no rewards for any more info from 4Chan.

According to Croatian news agency Vijesti, police in Bugojno are actively searching for the girl seen in the video. She is now believed to be in Bosnia. However, and this may not sit well with many, laws in Bosnia do not allow for jail time in such a case. The most that could happen is a fine.

Once again, this person needs to be caught. It does, however, need to be the right person.

This story was first published as "Bosnian police, PETA, Michael Bay (?) still searching for 'puppy thrower'" on HULIQ.com, by the same author.