Update: Jurassic Pets Owner Convicted of Cruelty, Co-Owner Still Faces Charges

For Immediate Release:
May 16, 2016

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Kenneth Mark Kubic—co-owner of the Jurassic Pets store, which was exposed in a PETA eyewitness exposé—has been convicted of 18 counts of cruelty to animals in Adams County Court. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 29.

As you may recall, video footage and photographs captured by PETA reveal that Jurassic Pets staff routinely denied animals water and attempted to kill domestic rats and mice by “whacking them against surfaces,” leaving some twitching and gasping for breath after the blows. Kubic admitted that he shoots cats and was recorded telling a PETA eyewitness to “[w]hack” an obviously ill rat and “[t]hrow him outside to the cats.”

Kubic’s wife, Jurassic Pets co-owner Lynn Denise Kubic, is scheduled for a June 16 to 17 trial on 38 cruelty to animals charges—and as you may remember, the facility’s manager and the Kubic’s son, Brian Kubic, pleaded guilty to cruelty to animals on April 13, 2016, and is scheduled for sentencing on June 1. In light of these convictions and PETA’s video exposé, PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—is calling on the Colorado and U.S. Departments of Agriculture to terminate the licenses held by the Kubics immediately under the Pet Animal Care and Facilities Act and Animal Welfare Act, respectively.

“Nothing can make up for the pain and fear that Kenneth Kubic and his family inflicted on animals, but we look to the court to show that the Kubics’ abuse of animals in the pursuit of profit will result in an order not to own or handle any animals for years to come,” says PETA Associate Director of Evidence Analysis Dan Paden. “Every time PETA looks into the pet trade, we find widespread suffering, which is why we urge people not to shop in stores that sell live animals.”

More information about the Jurassic Pets case is available here.