Michael Bay ‘offers $50k’ to find puppy drowner

Has the international hunt for the young woman allegedly filmed throwing live puppies into a river suddenly got a lot more explosive? Not only, as reported by The First Post, is the cyber mob of 4chan after her, but the Transformers director - and, presumably, dog lover - Michael Bay has just upped the stakes by apparently offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the girl's arrest.

Gawker.com is reporting that the bounty was offered via a statement on Bay's official website posted on Wednesday. Although it has now been taken down (a grab of the original post can be seen below) the announcement by Bay's webmaster, who calls himself Nelson, said:

"There is a disturbing video going around the news outlets. It's a video of a blonde young woman in a red sweatshirt casually tossing squealing puppies into the fast-moving river one by one.

"Michael Bay has informed me that he is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and successful prosecution of the woman in the red sweatshirt and the person who shot this act of cruelty."

Meanwhile the young woman in question may have already offered an apology on YouTube, although that too has been taken down. The apology is a statement at the beginning of the infamous video, from someone calling herself Katja Puschnik under the headline 'official apology'.

Her supposed statement read: "My name is Katja Puschnik and I would like to appologize [sic] for my behavior. The puppies belong to my grandma and she told me to get rid off [sic] them because they were only three days and they were ill. They had parasites from their mother. I didn't knew [sic] exactly what to do so I thrown [sic] them in the river because it was a short death. I did not want to make them suffer. I am really sorry for this :("

According to another report, the 'puppy thrower' has been tracked down to a Bosnian town called Bugojno. The Sarajevo-based animal rights group SOS told AFP that the incident is now the focus of a police investigation. Under Bosnian law a person who kills or tortures animals can be fined up to €5,000.

The animal rights group PETA has also joined the hunt for the young woman, although its reward of $2,000 is nowhere near as substantial as Michael Bay's. It is asking for "information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible for drowning a litter of helpless puppies." ·