The noise was coming from the same spot where several teenage boys had just watched a younger man walk into before driving away in a black car with tinted windows July 3, they said. The man then sat in his vehicle in another part of the parking lot, watching the boys.
Jared Hartman, 16, and his friends soon realized what they were hearing: It was the helpless meows of a kitten drowning in a swampy area of the park, with its front paws bound with tape behind its back.
After wading into the muck to rescue the muddy orange and white kitten, the boys rushed to Hartman’s home on Henderson Street. It looked like the cat’s legs were injured, and one of its rear paws appeared to be severely burned.
“The only reason we knew it was alive was because it was whining,” said Hartman’s mother, Ruth Schulze. “It was in so much pain, it wasn’t walking. It was crying all night long.”
Whitestown police responded to the home, where the officer took photographs of the cat’s injuries and filed a report. After taking the kitten to Spring Farm CARES in Clinton to be treated the next day, Hartman’s family never heard from police again.
But when they learned this week that a Whitestown town judge’s teenage son had been charged with binding a kitten’s paws with tape at the same Gibson Road park that month, Hartman’s family was shocked by how similar the incidents seemed.
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| Whitestown Town Justice Daniel Sullivan and his son Joseph Sullivan |
On July 21, a police officer had discovered Joseph Sullivan, the 19-year-old son of Whitestown Town Justice Daniel Sullivan, with two kittens in the women’s restroom at the park after it had closed.
While one kitten had its paws tied with taped, the other was still in a box and there was a lighter on the floor, police said.
The teen was charged with misdemeanor torture under the state’s animal cruelty law. The kitten did not appear to be injured, and Joseph Sullivan’s attorney, Ricardo Mauro, is seeking to have the charge dismissed.
Despite the strangely similar circumstances of both instances, police officials said they don’t believe the July 3 and July 21 incidents are linked to the same person: The description of the man seen near the woods doesn't match Joseph Sullivan's age and appearance, police said.
“Initially we thought that there was some sort of tie-in there, but there wasn’t,” Whitestown police Chief Donald Wolanin said Wednesday. “The first was more like an abandoned cat instead of an intentional act. We don’t think they’re related, and it could have been a coincidence.”
Police were never able to ask Joseph Sullivan if he knew anything about the earlier cat incident, since Sullivan had obtained an attorney, Wolanin said. The teen’s father, Daniel Sullivan, recently said he stood by his son but was prohibited as a sitting judge from discussing the matter.
After Hartman’s family brought the earlier rescued kitten to Spring Farm Cares, the animal sanctuary spent several thousand dollars treating the 8-to-10-week-old kitten and it’s infected burnt paw, said Executive Director Bonnie Reynolds.
“I felt a mixture of pure horror that this had been done to this little kitten, while at the same time I felt a great deal of warmth seeing very, very much how this little boy and his friends, who had rescued the cat, cared about him,” Reynolds said.
Once the kitten’s health bounced back, he was adopted by Hartman’s family in August and named “Chance,” for the second chance at life the boys gave the discarded cat, Schulze said.
“The cat is doing fine. He’s lovable and they did not have to amputate his legs,” Schulze said. “But it’s just lucky my son and his friends were there when they were there, otherwise he would be dead.”
Although it’s still unclear who injured Chance and tossed him into the water to die, both Reynolds and Schulze fear what that person will do next if he or she doesn’t receive psychiatric help.
“What we try to make people understand is that abusers of human beings – children, women, the elderly – and serial killers, they all cut their teeth on abusing little animals,” Reynolds warned.
These incidents occurred at a time when Oneida County is considering whether its next budget can afford to create a county-wide animal control investigator to handle such abuses, something Reynolds said she strongly supports.
“Oneida County does need the humane investigator, who can connect the dots and recognize an ongoing pattern, rather than have just some isolated incident that gets put away with a slap on the wrist and forgotten,” leaving the perpetrator free to continue a life of abusing more victims, Reynolds said.
(Utica dispatch - Sep 26, 2013)
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