Charges against one of the three men accused of animal cruelty in the highly publicized case involving a shark was dropped, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and Hillsborough County State Attorney’s Office.
Spencer Heintz, 23, faced two two felony counts of Aggravated Animal Cruelty. Two of the other defendants in the case, Michael Wenzel of Palmetto, Robert Lee Benac of Bradenton, still face multiple felonies stemming from an incident in which they keel-hauled a live blacktip shark while filming its gruesome death.
Wenzel and Benac face two counts of Aggravated Animal Cruelty, a third-degree felony, and one misdemeanor count of Illegal Method of Take. Video of the incident first surfaced in July of 2017 showing the shark being pulled behind a boat at a high rate of speed until the shark’s body had been ripped to shreds. The video shows the members of the fishing expedition laughing and reveling in the creature’s demise. A fourth man appearing in the video, Nicholas Burns Easterling, was not charged after cooperating with investigators.
The charges were brought in December after a four-month long investigation into the video and other images on social media, FWC investigators determined that the trio showed a “shocking disregard for Florida’s natural resources.” The incident was determined to have taken place off the coast of Egmont Key in Hillsborough County.
Heintz, who had previously pled not guilty, has agreed to turn into a witness against his boat mates in exchange for charges being dismissed. Heinz contends that even though he was a passenger on the boat, he was not involved in the actions shown in the video and in other social media posts that were taken as evidence.
“It was nothing Mr. Heintz did at all that contributed in any way to any of the activities that were charged in the case,” Heinz’s attorney Paul Sisco told WTSP. “There’s four gentlemen in the boat that’s involved here. The state attorney’s office was willing to and looked at all the facts and looked at the case law and it’s clear that there were different roles of the four men that were in the boat.”
Heintz’s father, Steven, is also a prominent south Florida Lawyer.
Wenzel’s father, Robert, is a Bradenton city planning manager. Michael Wenzel had been the subject of FWC investigations in the past but was never formally charged for the violations, a fact that he flaunted with his frequent use of the hashtag #FWCmostwanted. Benac’s mother, Betsy, is a Manatee County Commissioner and Republican Chair. She is an avid Trump supporter who frequently touted her family’s good Christian values on the campaign trail.
