A YORK student who fried a hamster has been ordered to do 120 hours of unpaid of work in the community.
James White, 21, admitted causing unnecessary suffering to the female Syrian hamster after a court accepted it could not be established whether the animal was alive when it went into the pan.
District Judge Roy Anderson told White he was sentencing him on the basis the rodent died minutes before, when the defendant was handling it.
Selby Magistrates’ Court heard White had drunk so much in his flat in York he was “on the point of madness” and could not remember what happened.
District Judge Anderson said it was clear the hamster did not die of natural causes and there was a degree of mystery about the incident.