Teens arrested after eating town's prized swan and kidnapping its babies from protected pond: Police

Three teenage friends reportedly hopped the fence of the pond between midnight and 3 a.m. Sunday night into Monday and held female swan Faye down while she was nesting.

Faye was killed at the swan pond according to police. The teenagers said they thought Faye was a wild large duck and decided to go “hunting.”

“They did not know that it was a swan, and they did not know that it was not a wild animal, that it was actually owned by the Village of Manlius,” Manlius Police Sgt. Ken Hatter said.

They took the swan back to one of their residences on Syracuse’s Northside and reportedly cooked and ate the swan.

They also took the four cygnets from the pond but intended to keep them and raise them as pets.

When asked if the teenagers had any idea of the significance of the swan to the community Hatter said, “They did not. In fact, I asked them specifically, the two juveniles, what they were going to do with the cygnets if they wanted to raise them ‘Were you going to raise them to later consume them?’ And they said, ‘No, we wanted to raise them.”

Community tips led the police to Black Friday Bins located in Shop City Plaza, where at least one of the teenagers was employed. Two suspects were at this location with two of the cygnets and the 16-year-old suspect turned himself in to the police.

According to Hatter, the third suspect was apprehended at another location off-site.

Eman Hussan, the 18-year-old suspect, was arrested and released on his own recognizance. He has a court date of June 15 at the Village of Manlius Court at 6:30 p.m.... (Read more)

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