A teenager has been charged with animal cruelty after detectives said he threw his pet off a balcony and across a car park, leaving it with a broken leg.
Kieran McKinney, 18, is accused of spraying the animal with a hose while it was locked in its carrier at his home in Palm Bay, Florida. McKinney allegedly abused the cat in two other incidents, by throwing it from a third-story balcony and breaking its leg, as well as tossing it on the couch.
A video obtained by CBS12 shows a teen using a flashlight and shooting water into the front of the carrier as well as the holes on the sides.
Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey described the act as ‘waterboarding’.
‘(He) actually put the cat in its carrier where it couldn’t get out, couldn’t escape, and took a water hose to it, on three different times, and sprayed into the cage, just torturing this poor cat,’ he said
The sheriff said McKinney also deprived the cat of food and water and was ‘just torturing this poor cat’ because it ‘had an accident’. The nature of the accident was not disclosed.
McKinney hurt the cat as a way of retaliating, Ivey said.
‘There’s no other way for me to frame it, except he likes to beat up cats,’ the sheriff said.
A photo showed the cat with a bandaged up paw and wearing an Elizabethan collar.
Police discovered the animal abuse while responding to a call reporting McKinney was involved in an altercation with someone else.
McKinney has been charged with three counts of aggravated animal cruelty and one count of animal confinement without food or water.
The sheriff’s office shared footage of Ivey and a few other deputies escorting McKinney from a patrol car into the police station. ‘We’re about to walk a sorry individual into our jail for animal cruelty,’ Ivey said, according to WFLA, adding after the door was shut, ‘That’s the sound of justice.’
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McKinney is being held in Brevard County Jail with his bond set at $80,000.
‘I would love to treat you just like you treated this cat, but the law keeps me from doing that,’ Ivey said of McKinney.
‘Just like it should’ve kept you from doing it.’
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