A teenage boy allegedly waterboarded a cat and threw him off a third-floor balcony for having an ‘accident’ at home.
Kieran McKinney, 18, is accused of spraying the animal with a hose while he was locked in his carrier at the home in Palm Bay, Florida.
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.
‘There’s no other word for it – waterboarding,’ said Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey on Wednesday.
‘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.’
The sheriff said McKinney also deprived the cat of food and water and was ‘just torturing this poor cat because the cat had had an accident’. The nature of the accident was not immediately disclosed.
McKinney allegedly abused the feline in multiple other ways besides the waterboarding act on October 18.
The instances included throwing the cat across a car park from a third-story balcony which resulted in him breaking his leg, and tossing the cat on the couch.
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 an Elizabethan collar.
Police discovered the animal abuse while responding to a call reporting that McKinney was in an altercation with someone else.
McKinney has been charged with three counts of aggravated animal cruelty and one county 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 for his perp walk.
‘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.’
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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