A Lithuanian man who threw a dog off a bridge has been hunted down by animal lovers who watched a video of the crime that the man posted online.

Police in the Lithuanian town of Kaunas arrested 22-year-old Svajunas Beniukas on animal cruelty charges after internet users helped police identify him and the bridge from which the small brown dog was thrown.

The video shows a man holding the dog, called Pipiras, Lithuanian for pepper, and laughing as his friend records the event on his mobile phone.

Checking that the coast is clear, he makes a joke about dogs flying and then drops the animal off the bridge.

Crashing onto a farm track below, Pipiras yelps in pain, and lies twitching on the ground.

But despite falling over 20 feet and sustaining multiple fractures and internal injuries, vets said the dog would survive.

“He’s lived with me for four to five years,” Petras Dunskaitis, the dog’s 70-year-old owner told a Lithuanian newspaper. “He didn’t deserve such a fate.”

Originally posted on a Lithuanian website, outrage at the treatment of the dog snowballed as the 40 seconds of footage spread across the globe, even making it to Facebook through the efforts of a 3,000-strong group calling itself the “Lithuanian Dog Support Group”.

Lithuanian police said a key breakthrough was tracing the local website, www.15min.it, where the footage originally appeared. The website’s users identified the man as Beniukas.

Local media reported that Beniukas may have sought revenge on the dog after it was suspected of killing some of his mother’s chickens.

He has been charged wtih animal cruelty and faces up to a year in jail.

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