Protesters who ate squirrels at vegan food fair guilty of causing public distress
TWO anti-vegan protesters who gnawed on dead squirrels as they stood next to meat-free food stalls in Soho have been convicted of causing alarm and distress to the public.
YouTuber Gatis Lagzdins, 29, and Deonisy Khlebnikov, 22, ripped open squirrel carcasses with their teeth and ate the rodents’ raw innards at Soho Vegan Food Market in Rupert Street off Shaftesbury Avenue.
In the incident on March 30, Lagzdins led a group of anti-vegan protesters who claimed the lifestyle choice poses a danger to human health.
The demonstration, part of Lagzdins’s self-proclaimed “carnivore tour”, was captured on video in clips he posted online. The Latvian national has more than 70,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel.
One protester held a placard reading, “Eat animal fats, don’t die”, while Lagzdins chomped on the squirrel with a dead bird hanging around his neck. He also ate a raw pig’s head in Brighton earlier this year.
Passers-by can be heard in the online videos expressing shock and saying the protest made them “feel sick”. The trial heard how a young boy with autism became visibly distressed.
An off-duty officer raised the alarm and pair were led away in handcuffs, while Lagzdins’s followers filmed every moment of the arrest.
Khlebnikov told the trial he had been inspired by Lagzdins and said he regularly eats raw meat to help deal with a stomach problem. He insisted that his fermented raw meat diet means he sees eating a squirrel with its skin on as “normal”. The court also heard that by the time the two men ate the squirrels, bought online from a farmer who hunts them as “game”, the corpses had begun to smell.
At Westminster magistrates’ court yesterday, both Lagzdins and Khlebnikov, of Westminster, were found guilty of engaging in disorderly behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.
Lagzdins did not turn up for last month’s trial and was convicted and sentenced yesterday in his absence.
District Judge Devinder Sandhu told Khlebnikov: “While you may have been expressing what you may perceive to be a legitimate point of view, in my view what you did with Mr Lagzdins that day went too far and became gratuitous.”
Lagzdins was ordered to pay a £400 fine, while Khlebnikov was fined £200. Both men were also ordered to cover the prosecution’s costs of £310 each.