RFK Jr. may have faced $250 fine for dumping dead bear cub in Central Park, but statute of limitations has expired, NY says

CNN —

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2014 disposal of a dead bear cub in New York City’s Central Park may have violated state law, punishable by a fine of up to $250, but the statute of limitations for the law in question expired after one year, the state agency that led the investigation said in a statement to CNN.

Kennedy has made light of a decade-old incident in which he drove a dead bear cub carcass from upstate New York to New York City and placed it in Central Park, joking, “maybe that’s where I got my brain worm,” referring to a past medical abnormality he has said was caused by a parasitic worm in his brain.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation led the 2014 investigation into how a bear cub carcass had made into the famous Manhattan public park.

The New Yorker published a profile of Kennedy on Monday morning that included the anecdote and a photo of Kennedy with the dead bear cub, which he had picked up from the side of the road while on a trip upstate. When Kennedy returned to Manhattan later that day, he left the carcass in the park in a way to make it look like it had been hit by a cyclist, the New Yorker reported, and the discovery of the bear carcass attracted news coverage and prompted an investigation by local authorities. Kennedy revealed the incident on social media on Sunday as part of an effort to get ahead of the magazine’s story.

In a statement Monday afternoon, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said that it “led the 2014 investigation and forensic analysis into the Central Park bear cub and concluded the bear died from blunt-force trauma consistent with a high-speed collision.”

The investigation closed later