Preschool pets found dead and mutilated in Millbrae

MILLBRAE, Calif. (KGO) -- A bizarre crime at a preschool over the weekend has a community on the Peninsula rattled.

Sometime between 4 p.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. on Sunday, someone vandalized the schoolyard and killed their pet chickens.

"Someone came in and tortured our chickens, removed them from their pen as well, and laid them out," said Brigidan Bogni-Rodriguez, who has been the director of Millbrae Nursery School for more than twenty years.

Four chickens were found mutilated, one in the coop and three lined up behind the preschool fence. A fifth chicken is still missing.

"There's a great violation and an uneasiness that we all are now feeling," said Bogni-Rodriguez, who is worried the crimes could escalate.

"What is next - children or other adults? Where does it stop?"

The San Mateo County Sheriffs came out to the preschool to investigate, they even took the dead chickens as evidence.

But on Wednesday, the Sheriff's department said in a statement that the chicken's "injuries cannot be conclusively determined to have been caused by a person."

But school staff wonder how an animal could have possibly broken a barn window, let the bunnies out of their pen, or moved furniture and toys around the yard.

Not to mention, how the chickens were placed after they were killed.

"A raccoon is not going to throw these huge tires into the chicken coop," said Bogni-Rodriguez.

"To be in this type of environment and for somebody to conduct themselves in that way seems mad," said Trina Sodha, a school board member.

Sodha also has three children who have attended the school.

"It just felt extremely violent, especially to happen in this type of environment, where it's a school, where the children play every day."

Millbrae Nursery School serves many low-income families and now has a GoFundMe page to raise money for cameras and floodlights in the yard.

"When you realize that a place that you've been sending your kids don't have that, it becomes a realization that that is so important and for these very reasons," explained Sodha.

The school bunnies were unharmed and have been moved inside. The children don't know why their egg-laying preschool pets are now gone.