Police have reportedly found the young woman in a red shirt who was filmed throwing puppies into a river.
Local police in Travnik, on the eastern edge of Bosnia near the Croatian border, identified the girl after her parents reportedly turned her in, according to news report leaked to local online news outlet Index.hr.
The girl - who remains unidentified - and her parents were asked to make the roughly 40 km journey to the city of Bugojno to make an official statement to police.
The investigation garnered international attention after a video hit the Internet on Tuesday showing a young girl, likely a teenager, picking up puppies from a white bucket and hurling them into a roaring river. She can be heard to laugh or say "whee" as she does so.
The video sparked an international furor among animal rights activists and sympathizers.
PETA had earlier offered a $2,000 reward for the capture and conviction of the puppy-thrower.
On Wednesday evening, Gawker media reported that Hollywood director Michael Bay also offered $50,000 reward for the girl's arrest.
Then, on Thursday afternoon, a video surfaced on YouTube that used a single frame-grab from the original video with the text of an apology overlaid on it.
The apology read: "My name is Katja Puschnik and I would like to appologize [sic] for my behavior. The puppies belong to my grandma and she told me to get rid off them because they were only 3 days and they were ill. They had parasites from their mother. I didn't knew [sic] exactly what to do so I
thrown [sic] them in the river because it was a short death. I did not want to make them suffer. I am really sorry for this :("
But its quick removal from YouTube and lack of additional information makes it difficult to tell if the apology is real or a hoax.
Dozens of fake apologies purporting to be from the girl have shown up on blogs across the Internet.
Animal abuse laws in Bosnia would allow for the girl's parents - if the girl is underage - to be fined, but no jail time is expected.
