The Flamingo Case Heads to Sentencing on December 1: A Tourist, a Bird Named Peachy, and Up to Four Years
A Clark County jury convicted Mitchell Fairbarn on October 19 of felony and misdemeanor animal cruelty for taking Peachy, a 27-year-old Chilean flamingo, from the Flamingo Las Vegas wildlife habitat to his hotel room in March. Peachy has recovered. Fairbarn, on house arrest, faces up to four years in prison when he is sentenced on December 1.
The strangest animal case on this year's Clark County docket reaches its last chapter on December 1, when Mitchell Grant Fairbarn is sentenced for what a jury decided in October was animal cruelty. Fairbarn, 34, of Ontario, Canada, was convicted on October 19 of one felony and one misdemeanor count after a trial in the Eighth Judicial District Court over the March 3 incident at the Flamingo Las Vegas, where prosecutors said he entered the wildlife habitat at about 5 a.m., grabbed Peachy — a 27-year-old Chilean flamingo who lives in the resort's free, public habitat — by the legs and neck, and carried the bird through the hotel to his room.
The evidence was the hotel's own cameras and the defendant's phone-era trail: surveillance footage and Snapchat material showed the episode, and the physical record — missing feathers, blood, wing injuries that required treatment — carried the harm. Fairbarn testified in his own defense that he had drunk 30 to 40 beers over roughly 24 hours and meant the episode as a joke to show friends; his lawyer conceded recklessness and alcohol while disputing the malicious intent the felony required. Jurors deliberated about five hours after hearing 14 witnesses and 112 exhibits, and convicted on both counts. Peachy, the court heard from veterinarian Dr. Tiffany Moore, has recovered physically, though the bird is more anxious at examinations than before.
What remains is the sentence. Fairbarn faces up to four years in prison on the felony and up to six months in county jail on the misdemeanor, and he remains on house arrest in Las Vegas until the December 1 hearing before Judge Jacqueline Bluth. District Attorney Steven B. Wolfson praised the October verdict. For the Strip, the case closes a loop that began with a pre-dawn stunt in one of its oldest resorts' best-known free attractions — and the sentencing will decide what a night like that costs.
