By Jeremy Ryan
Monday, November 02, 2009 at 3:09 p.m.
Read more: Local, Crime
SYRACUSE -- The Syracuse Police Department tells Action News that they have made an arrest in a case of animal cruelty which was recorded on a videocamera.
Police say that on Sunday morning they received a call to a home on Graves Street to investigate a complaint of cruelty against an animal. Responding officers say that they spoke with the animal’s owner, who told them that she had evidence that her live-in boyfriend had tortured her four-month-old kitten.
The kitten’s owner, Joanne Cichy, told police that on Halloween night she left her apartment to take her children trick-or-treating. Cichy says that when she returned home, she could not find her kitten. On Sunday, Cichy says she was looking at photographs on her digital camera when she discovered what she called “extremely disturbing” video of the kitten hanging from a door inside the apartment with a belt around its neck. Cichy says she thought the kitten was dead and called 911, who in turn alerted Syracuse Police.
Cichy played the video for investigating officers, which they say shows the kitten struggling against the belt as it hangs. Also seen in the video was Cichy’s boyfriend, 22-year-old Rascell Williams, who we're told came in and out of frame as he apparently attempted to focus the camera.
Williams has been arrested and charged with misdemeanor unjustifable animal cruelty. The kitten was found alive under the front porch of the home with what police say are injuries consistent with what was seen in the video.
