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Live Chicken Prank Lands 3 N.J. Students In The Coop

Allegedly Turn Animals Loose In School, Face Criminal Charges

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N.J. chicken prank

Anthony Cesareo, right, and Tyler Bruno are facing criminal charges for their role in a prank inside a New Jersey high school. (Photo: CBS 2)

sloan

Reporting Christine Sloan

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WOODBRIDGE, N.J. (CBSNewYork) — It was supposed to be a senior prank, but now three students in Woodbridge said they’re facing criminal charges — and may not be able to walk through graduation ceremony and take part in other senior activities.

Does the punishment go too far?

It wasn’t the T-shirts that got two 17-year-olds in trouble, but the actual chickens they said they released into their high school as part of a senior prank back in February.

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“So we confessed. We told the truth. Now we’re getting charged with trespassing, disorderly conduct, not allowed to go to prom, not allowed to go to graduation, and all that,” Anthony Cesareo told CBS 2’s Christine Sloan.

Cesareo and Tyler Bruno said they bought live chickens from a store in Newark and pushed the chickens through a window at Woodbridge High School in the middle of the night. A janitor found them in the morning before school started.

“Just how harsh they’re being with the punishment and everything, the seriousness of a not serious prank,” Bruno said.

Cesareo, who was suspended from school Wednesday, spoke to Sloan with his mother and two friends who face the same consequences.

“They’re taking it too far, way too far,” Anna Cesareo said. 

The school’s principal wouldn’t comment and Sloan’s calls to the superintendent haven’t been returned.

Police said they can’t release information on the 17-year-olds because they’re juveniles, but they gave Sloan the report on 18-year-old Bryan Pater, saying he’s been charged with trespassing.”

“I am very worried,” Pater said.

Pater said he’s not happy about the charges and of not going to the prom.

“For us not to be there, it would just be heartbreaking,” Pater said.

“It’s not fun anymore. No one knows how to have a good laugh,” Anthony Cesareo added.

It may have been a joke to them, but police said it wouldn’t have been so funny if a student got hurt.

The teenagers said they got the chickens from a live poultry shop in Newark, but the shop denied it, saying they don’t let live chickens leave their premises.

The 18-year-old faces a $1,000 fine and six months in prison, but it’s unlikely he’ll face any time. A judge can give him community service.

Do you think these kids are being too harshly punished? Offer your thoughts in the comments section below.

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  • bloodaxe

    Maybe they were the wrong kind of chicken. If they were Rhode Island Reds it would have been OK.

  • Michelle

    This school and the jokers who run it ought to feel embarrassed that CBS has brought attention to this school not for any particular achievement but for a few lonely chickens roaming the halls.

  • Dean Ferdig

    Killer Chicken on the loose! Everybody! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!!!!!!
    All the troubles in the schools today, and they are worried about a harmless prank?

  • skippy777

    millioins of ghetto students are dealing drugs and taking drugs every day in government schools…..but it is not reported by america’s garbage liberal media….main stream media works hard to trash white christian students while it also functions as african americans’ publicist.

  • farm kid

    Actually I did this during lunch (class of 80). princpal just called the ag teacher and him get us kids over there to gather up the chickens. No cops involved. Everybody got a good laugh from it. The chickens came from the coup at home.

  • carole

    In the 60′s, the seniors at my high school did pranks every year, like putting a calf in the Princiipal’s office, or putting an outhouse on top of the school. Everyone knew the seniors did it, and the seniors got to clean it up, pay for damages, etc. No one thought to involve the police. I think everyone was impressed at the ingenuity of the kids and the time and energy they expended in carrying out these pranks. Punish them? Never!

  • Dave

    for gods sake GET A GRIP Leo”s
    My Senior pranks pulled off a greased pig couple of chickens
    and walked a cow up 3 flights of stairs
    AND a 20 year tradition of putting the Vice Principals ‘
    VW on the roof

    • Coraline

      How did you get the cow back down the steps? They will walk up steps but won’t go down. Just curious. ;)

  • jess

    I’d sue the cops for fake criminal charges. You can’t charge someone for trespassing when 1) They were not there 2) you never told them to leave and 3) You had previously invited them onto the property. The biggest being 1…that they weren’t even there.

    A big FU to the school and cops wasting my money.

  • badman

    those shirts are awesome

  • Tony

    *Napoleon Dynamite*Do those chickens have sharp talons?*Napoleon Dynamite*

  • Roger in NC

    “It may have been a joke to them, but police said it wouldn’t have been so funny if a student got hurt.” Got hurt by what?? The chickens? Were the chickens armed? This was a PRANK, not a terrorist attack.

    • Tina Miller Silverman

      I am LMAO at all of this…so petty…Senior Prank night always brings a laugh but the administration always makes it like they are all serial killers…hope they get off…or they can get a good portion of the people to NOT go to the PROM..make your own prom …dinner at a great place …a comedy show or something. Beat them at their own game…let them lose $$ on the Prom…time for retaliation…Graduation barring not appropriate…no one should go…get the diplomas and have your own presentation make the most of this stupid situation.

  • nicolette

    Lmfao , I love my cousin, pater & ty – they shouldn’t get in trouble at alll, it was obviously a joke, everyone deserves to have fun their last year in highhschool

  • vinko

    For christ’s sake the former Jersey governor was having daisy chains with boys at rest stops and he gets a slap on the wrist, Wow what is this US coming too, expelled for putting a couple chickens in the school. As the previous comment clean it up and life goes on. What a great prank, I wish I had done it.

  • tonya b

    Is there some sort of chicken flu that could have done the students in? Get a life, prosecute the juvenile losers in this world who are commiting real crimes. Talk about making the authorities look like idiots!

    • James Nantz

      These “cops” are too damn lazy and scared to go after real criminals and the actual violent kids so they pull this mess and make it sound like they’re actually doing something other than scratching their ass and eating donuts. If only these morons would realize that their actions just make them look like even bigger fools.

  • Acerdude

    When I was in high school a friend of mine drove his dirt bike through the halls and made a quick getaway. No cops, no idiot teachers caused trouble. It was just fun.

    • Sancho Panza

      “We told the truth”

      That is not too hard to do when most New Jersey high schools now have cameras all over the buildings.

  • CPC

    The school is going too far…they are chicken s#%t to do this.

  • Jeff LeF.

    Who collected the eggs?

  • Julie Brackeen Koontz

    KILLER CHICKENS ON THE LOOSE!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

  • jake

    Don’t any govermit agents have a sense of humor any more? Of course they are being too hard on the kids.

    This was a great prank.

    Should have released them during school hours

  • Maximus

    My god, it is a senior prank and a pretty decent one at that. This country has become way too sensitive. We have become a nation of pansies. Thank you liberals!!

  • Bob

    I never recall of any student being attacked by a chicken. Huh! Say What?

  • Marco

    “If a student got hurt”? Please.

  • Jay Cunnington

    Back in 1967, a guy in my brother’s class smeared Limburger cheese on some steam heating pipes on the 3rd floor and closed the school for a couple of days. I don’t remember what happened to him, but the students all got a laugh out of it and the police were not involved.

    It makes you wonder what they’d do to him now.

    • M Fortas

      Jail for 10 years min.

      This country is soooooo off course.
      Makes me sick to call myself an American. Really.

      • stinkin

        just say Heil Obama!

  • gary

    WHAT!!!!! it wouldn’t have been so funny if a student got hurt? How big were those hens?

    • urdrwho

      Oh they must have weighed 60 pounds. How big do you think a hen can grow? I guess you have never even seen a chicken coop. So many pamper pooches living in the USA.

      • Uncle Frodo

        Vicious ATTACK chickens! It is not the talons or beak to fear, but the anus! Deadly, slippery poop is expelled thereout. Union counselors, teachers and principals, living high on the hog and awaiting huge taxpayer-funded pensions, could possibly slip and injure themselves- oh, the HORROR! Taxpayers would have to foot the bills, but that’s irrelevant- the union school employees would be devastated by the pain and suffering of not being to see their precious little robots during the doctor visit- which is also taxpayer-funded-including the copayment.

  • MLebeau

    This country has lost their sense of humor completely. Have the boys clean up the mess, get rid of the chickens and apologize to the student body and be done with it. It was a prank for chrissakes!

    • DeeDee

      Doesn’t Woodbridge Township have anything better to do with their time and money?
      Consider the chicken prank ( way to go guys!) compared to vandalism, dealing drugs, weapons in school and other things that go on in High School lately.These kids deserve points for being creative and good humored.

      Let Richie and Potsy and Ralphie go to Prom and Graduation, and spend the taxpayer dollars on serious issues.

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