The Supreme Court of B.C. has found John Ronald Hughes guilty of animal cruelty for zapping his girlfriend's cat to death in a microwave. Hughes will be sentenced in Fernie Provincial Court.
Hughes woke Sara Kons, his girlfriend, on Valentine's Day 2005 and told her that he had sat down heavily on a couch with a faulty leg, crushing the cat underneath.
According to the court transcript, Kons said the cat was gasping for air and she told Hughes the only thing she knew to do was to break its neck to end its pain, because no vet was available.
Kons returned to sleep, but said she was woken by the sound of the microwave door. She went downstairs to find Hughes, who had been drinking, holding the cat. The microwave door was open and the cat had a weight strapped to it.
"It was convulsing and . . . the only way I can explain it is . . . the sound that I heard is . . . what it would be like if a cat could scream," Kons testified. "It was horrible."
Kons said she was in shock. She starting yelling at Hughes before sitting on the stairs and crying. Then, Hughes threw the cat at her.
"I missed catching it, and it hit the ground in front of me, gasping a few times while it was still convulsing and died," Kons testified.
The Supreme Court hearing was an appeal of a ruling in Fernie Provincial Court that found Hughes not guilty.
The provincial court judge found there wasn't enough evidence to prove Hughes intended to cause unnecessary pain and suffering.
But Supreme Court Justice Frank Cole said the issue wasn't whether the intention was to end the cat's suffering, but whether a reasonable person would know that strapping a weight to a cat's back and putting it in a microwave for "approximately 54 seconds" would cause unnecessary pain.
"This is strong evidence upon which to find that the respondent knew and intended for his actions to cause unnecessary pain, suffering and injury to the cat."
Source: The Province
Monday, June 02, 2008
