Alabama mayor claims self-defense after video shows him killing raccoon with shovel

An Alabama mayor is claiming self-defense after video posted online showed him killing a raccoon with a shovel, then tossing its body in a patch of grass on the side of the road.

The video was recorded over the weekend while Jim Staff, the mayor of Atmore in Southern Alabama, was on vacation in nearby Gulf Shores with his wife, according to AL.com. The newspaper reported that the woman who captured the video published it on Facebook, riling up neighbors who thought the raccoon had been friendly.

“He’s trying to get food. He’s always here — he comes right up to people all the time, people feed him. That’s why he comes up to you,” a witness told the mayor in a recording of the incident, which was published by NorthEscambia.com on YouTube.

As the video ends, the mayor drives away in his pickup with a boat behind it. A woman speaking in the video threatens to call police.

But the mayor said in a statement that the raccoon was “acting unnaturally” on Sunday at a public boat ramp around him and his wife, the Atmore Advance reports.

“I was going to back the boat into the water and my wife was out of the truck to hold the rope for the boat,” Staff said, according to the Advance. “Although I didn’t see it, I heard my wife yell and jump back in the truck and say, ‘look out for the raccoon.’ A raccoon had run at my wife while she was out of the truck.”

And the raccoon apparently didn’t go away.

“I took a shovel out of the truck because I didn’t know what the raccoon was going to do,” Staff said, per the newspaper. “At that point, the raccoon then ran at me. That is when I hit the raccoon with the shovel.”

Not all of the witnesses were outraged about what he was doing, Staff said in the statement published by the newspaper.

“In fact, one lady, not the one who posted the Facebook video, asked me to put it out of its misery, which I did with the shovel,” Staff said, per the Advance. “It was only at this point that the video was taken, and it provides a misleading picture of what actually happened.”

He said he killed the animal because it “was dying and would not recover,” AL.com reports

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State officials weighed in on the mayor’s side.

“What he did is not illegal,” said Chris Lewis, of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, according to NorthEscambia.com. “It is OK to defend yourself against a wild raccoon.”

Lewis also said that feeding the raccoon — as one would feed a pet — isn’t allowed in the state, NorthEscambia.com reports.

“Raccoons are the biggest carrier of rabies in the state,” said Kim Nix, a spokesperson for the department, according to the publication. “They can never be treated like pets.”

Police in Gulf Shores said they were investigating the incident as a case of possible animal cruelty, WKRG reported on Tuesday.