Colombia: Cat Launching Video by Radio DJ Causes Outrage

A video uploaded by Medellin DJ Yohan Melguizo on popular social network Facebook two months ago is causing outrage among animal lovers in Medellin, Colombia.  The DJ works for Energia, a reggaeton radio station, and in the video it seems there are three people at the scene where one of them is seen launching a live cat through the skies while singing Chombo's The Flying Cat. The other two at the scene have been tagged as Danny Lopez and Santiago Agudelo Gutierrez, and in the video's comments it seems that it was Agudelo who did the launching while the others watched and recorded the incident. [Edited to Add: Video has since been taken down from DJ's facebook page]

On Facebook, people are starting to share this video and making a call for authorities to step up. Taking into accounts the recent attention given to the case of the British woman caught on video as she calmly put a cat inside a trash can, it is hoped that the cat tossers in Medellin will have to take responsibility for their actions.

Edited to Add:

Since the article was published, more information has come up through facebook. Julian Ortega sent in a note:

Me enteré hace un momento (por esta página de FB) de que el video que publicaron los reguetoneros ya circulaba desde antes en la red. Mira: http://www.cronica.cl/noticias/site/artic/20100202/pags/20100202164430.php y http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1362072454224 (total, los tipos aparecieron lavándose las manos y diciendo que eso era ‘de un HP costeño’.

I found out moments ago (through this FB page) that the video published by the reggaton fans had already made its rounds online. Look: http://www.cronica.cl/noticias/site/artic/20100202/pags/20100202164430.php y http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1362072454224 (in the end the guy showed up washing their hands of the business and saying that the one in the video is a ‘F-ing costeño’ [person who comes from the Colombian coast]

A group is up on Facebook asking Melguizo to step up and explain why he posted the video (even if he wasn't involved) without any words of condemnation to the action. The group also posted a copy of the video in question, which has now been removed from the DJ's facebook page. It is in this group that the DJ responded to the video issue a few hours ago:

Señores 1ro Que Todo Saludo Recargado De Energia segundo heyy El del
Video no soy Yo, 1ro ese Hp es costeño y ese fukcing video me lo
mandaron por coreo y simplente lo comparti en el facebook por que me
parecio asqueroso, y ay dejen de andar mandando mensajes sin saber bn las cosas

Sirs, 1st Of All a Recharged Energy Filled Greeting second heyy The one in the Video isn't me, 1st that SoB is from the coast and that f-ing video was sent to me by mail and I simply shared it on facebook because I thought it was gross and hey stop sending messages withouth knowing the full story.

Melguizo also erased comments from his facebook video where the conversation implied that they were involved with the cat throwing, but as Juan David Hurtado posts on his blog, the internet screen capturing fingers are quicker:

Dejo aquí el video y capturas de pantalla obtenidas por dos usuarios en las cuales se ve claramente algunos comentarios ya borrados en los que incluso, uno de sus compañeros tilda a “La rata” como el autor material del hecho. Por ahí dicen que el que nada debe, nada teme… ¿por qué habrán borrado esos comentarios?

I'll post here the video and the screen captures obtained by two users in which you can clearly see some comments which have since been erased in which one of his coworkers mentions that “The rat” was the author of the misdeed. Around here they say that he who doesn't owe anything doesn't fear anything… why did they erase those comments then?

In Antofagasta Chile, a person who similarly posted the video online apologized publicly after he was accused of throwing the cat from his balcony. He wrote to the papers stating that he understood that he had made a mistake by uploading that video to Facebook, that he didn't mean to hurt so many people and clarified that he only shared the video, but didn't have anything to do with authoring it.

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