BEIJING — Visitors to a zoo in southeast China, apparently hoping for a livelier show, pelted kangaroos with rocks, ultimately killing one, injuring another and setting off a wave of public disgust and anger.

The 12-year-old female kangaroo died in a zoo in Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian Province, over a month ago. But the news surfaced only this week, when a local newspaper, The Haixia Metropolis News, described zookeepers’ shock at finding it with a smashed foot, hobbled and listless, after at least one visitor apparently threw stones in an attempt to make it jump.

“Some of us saw visitors throwing stones, and an attendant went out to stop it, but the visitors denied doing it,” a veterinarian at the zoo, who gave only her surname, Chen, told The Paper, a Shanghai-based news website.

A veterinarian cleaned and treated the kangaroo’s injured foot. But a few days later, it died suddenly from profuse internal bleeding. The zoo believes the bleeding was caused by undetected injuries from the stones.