Prominent lawyer boasts of killing fox with baseball bat

A prominent lawyer and campaigner has caused upset on social media by tweeting that he killed a fox with a baseball bat.

Jolyon Maugham QC, whose Good Law Project has brought legal challenges to Brexit, posted about the incident.

The RSPCA said on Twitter that it was “distressing to hear” and that it was looking into it.

Mr Maugham, who has about 179,000 followers on Twitter, later apologised “to those upset by my tweet”.

In the offending post, shortly after 8am, he said: “Already this morning I have killed a fox with a baseball bat. How’s your day going?”

He also revealed in a subsequent tweet that he was wearing his wife’s silk kimono at the time.

Other Twitter users responded with anger about what he had done and accusing him of bragging about his actions.

Mr Maugham said the fox had “got caught up in the protective netting around the chickens” and that he “wasn’t sure what else to do”.

Government guidelines state that if a fox is caught in a trap or snare on a person’s property, they must “humanely kill any fox you catch while it’s in the trap or snare”.

Gassing or poisoning foxes is prohibited.

(c) Sky News 2019: Prominent lawyer boasts of killing fox with baseball bat