[imagesource: Donatas Dabravolkskas]

Sometimes you read about something so horrible that it’s hard to imagine that anyone would actually do it.

This is one of those things.

The homeless are among the most vulnerable people in society.

They often live off the grid, and people don’t pay much attention to them, which is why they’re easily exploited and it often takes a while to find out if a homeless person has gone missing, or has been hurt.

The ‘Bumfights’ videos in the late 1990s and early 2000s, shot by teenagers in California and showing homeless people fighting, enraged activists and led to a number of arrests.

You can still find those videos and others on YouTube, but let’s move along.

Another man in California, William Robert Cable, was recently arrested and charged with allegedly poisoning at least eight homeless people with food laced with oleoresin capsicum, a substance twice as strong as pepper spray.

He then filmed them as they became progressively more ill.

BBC reports:

Several of the alleged victims were hospitalised and authorities believe the suspect could have targeted others.

Mr Cable faces up to 19 years in prison if convicted.

“These human beings were preyed upon because they are vulnerable,” Orange County’s district attorney Todd Spitzer said.

“They were exploited and poisoned as part of a twisted form of entertainment, and their pain was recorded so that it could be relived by their attacker over and over again.”

Cable approached homeless people in the Huntington Beach area in May and offered them food that he had poisoned beforehand.

Some of the victims were told they would be taking part in a “spicy food challenge” and were given beer to encourage them to take part, while others were unaware the food had been tampered with.

Upon eating the food, they suffered reactions including seizure-like symptoms, difficulty breathing and vomiting, the District Attorney’s Office said.

He is being held on $500 000 bail and will face eight counts of poisoning.

Police are appealing to the public to help them find any further victims that might have been poisoned by Cable.

This is exactly the kind of person that deserves to be locked up for a long, long time.

[source:bbc]