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- Feb 12, 2007
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Teen Jailed For Killing Cat With Crossbow
A teenager has been jailed for three months for killing her neighbour's cat with a crossbow.
Chloe O'Connor had been drinking with her boyfriend when she spotted the cat, called Trouble, on the garden fence next door.
She shot at the six-year-old pet from the bedroom window of her house in Hyde, Greater Manchester, on June 22, Tameside Magistrates' Court was told.
The bolt pierced his stomach and came out of the other side. The ginger-and-white Tom managed to drag himself part of the way home before he collapsed and died.
When officers knocked on her door the next day, former nursery nurse O'Connor admitted shooting the cat. She told police: "I did it last night when I was drunk."
Mark Harper, prosecuting for the RSPCA, said she had caused the cat to suffer and die a painful death.
He read out a victim impact statement from Trouble's 51-year-old owner Giovanni Zazzarino, who rescued him as a kitten.
It said: "He was much loved by me and my two daughters. I was totally upset when I heard he had been shot. My daughters are devastated. I can't believe what has happened.
"I want Chloe O'Connor to be harshly sentenced. If she has it in her to do that to a cat then what type of person is she?"
Defence lawyer Russell Wild said O'Connor, who admitted one charge of animal cruelty at an earlier hearing, resigned from her job after the incident because she was "disgusted and ashamed of herself".
He said: "It is a shocking offence towards this animal but it is a complete one-off."
O'Connor was sentenced to 12 weeks in a youth offender institute and banned from owning a pet for 10 years.
