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Cat-dragging charges against cable employees downgraded
Published in the Home News Tribune 2/7/04
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ATLANTIC
CITY -- Two cable-company employees who allegedly dragged a cat from the bumper of a truck were cleared of cruelty because
it was dead to begin with, officials said yesterday.
"While this was a despicable act, New Jersey law expressly
states that an animal must have been alive when it was tortured in order to lodge animal-cruelty charges," said Atlantic County
Prosecutor Jeffrey Blitz. "The dragging of a dead animal is not prohibited by the animal-cruelty statute."
On Dec.
22, Joseph Newton, 25, was spotted driving an Ocean Cable Co. truck with a cat tied to the rear bumper.
A co-worker,
Robert Hewitt, 28, was trailing the truck in a second vehicle when off-duty police Sgt. Ken Brown saw the cat and notified
police dispatch.
Newton and Hewitt were charged with animal cruelty.
But an autopsy on the nearly
unrecognizable corpse showed no signs of hemorrhage or reddening around the cat's neck, where the wire had been tied to attach
it to the truck.
Had the cat been alive at the time, there would have been, according to Dr. Herbert Van Kruiningen,
head of veterinary science at the University of Connecticut's diagnostic laboratory.
The cat died from broken
bones and cuts consistent with having been struck by a vehicle, Kruiningen said.
Copyright 2004 Home News
Tribune.
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