William Nathan Hill, 69, originally was charged by the Mason City Police Department with first-offense animal torture, an aggravated misdemeanor.
The Cerro Gordo County Attorney's Office later reduced that charge to abandonment of an animal, a simple misdemeanor. Hill pleaded guilty to that charge and was sentenced on Tuesday by Magistrate Patrick Byrne.
Court records say the state did not seek jail time for Hill.
One person posted on the Globe Gazette's website that she was disgusted at the action of the Cerro Gordo County Attorney's Office as she had to pay $100 to reclaim her cat from the shelter after it slipped out her door one day.
Clearly, the Cerro Gordo County Attorney's Office doesn't take animal abuse and torture seriously if both of these people - one a loving cat owner and the other a horrid cat killer - get the same fine.
Police say Hill threw a gym bag containing his own calico cat into the river on March 21. It was witnessed by two people who went down to the river and found a live cat in the bag, officials say.
Hill turned himself in to police on March 24.
The cat survived and was nicknamed "Winnie" — short for the Winnebago River — by shelter staff at the Humane Society of North Iowa.
Ken Avery of St. Paul, Minnesota, has adopted Winnie.
(Globe Gazette - May 26, 2015)
Earlier:
- Iowa: Mason City police seek man who zipped cat inside duffel bag and then threw her into river to drown
- Iowa: Mason City man William Hill, 69, accused of throwing cat into river to drown
- Iowa: Winnie, the cat thrown into a river to drown inside a duffel bag by William Hill, finds a new home
- Iowa: Cerro Gordo County Attorney's Office thinks that trapping cat inside duffel bag and throwing it into a river to drown is not torture; that's only abandonment of an animal
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