Headless animals dumped on Miami street: Santería to blame?

Horrific Find: Ritual Animal Sacrifice, or Sick Prank?

From Dateline Zero – A loud boom woke residents of a Miami neighborhood very early Thursday morning. Some of the residents went outside to see what the startling noise could have been. What they saw brought many more questions than answers.

The scene in the street, stretching for two blocks, was horrific. The photos confirm the nightmarish scene.

“The scene resembled something from a nightmare,” reports NBC Miami. “A trail of headless animals with body parts strewn everywhere.” About a dozen goats, cats and different types of birds were laid out on nearly two blocks. Also, there was a large carcass from something “unidentifiable.”

“Nothing had a head,” said local resident Marioly Perez.

According to the New York Daily News, the police suspect it“may have been a Halloween prank or part of a religious ceremony” involving ritual sacrifice.

When the residents came out of their homes, they were overwhelmed by the smell of the headless carcasses. The suffocating smell made it seem as if the animals had been dead for a long time.

Police believe the animals may have been part of a ritual sacrifice linked to the religion Santeria. The religion is practiced throughout Florida and its followers often practice animal sacrifice, according to local reports.

The city’s sanitation department cleared away the animal carcasses, and the fire department washed the remaining gore off the street. Will some of the local residents would want to have a priest or minister do some cleansing of another kind? Was this the aftermath of some brutal animal sacrifice done by a horrid religion; and if so, did it bring something dark upon the neighborhood?

Continue reading from the full article at Dateline Zero.