Borough resident Mike Lienert tells the operator "I guess it's not an emergency," but adds that he has three dogs, according to a recording of the call provided to The Morning Call after a Right-to-Know request.
"I'll send an officer over to see what they can do," a dispatcher tells Lienert.
Moments after the call was made, borough police Officer Leighton Pursell is dispatched to the1100 block of American Street and several minutes later tells the dispatcher the cat is "10-07," the police radio code for "out of service."
The officer's killing of Sugar, which the cat's owner, Tom Newhart, has called an act of animal cruelty, remains under investigation by the Northampton County district attorney's office. Newhart said Sugar had slipped out of his house and wandered a few houses away and he only learned she had been killed after calling the police department's nonemergency number for help finding her.
District Attorney John Morganelli said in an email that the 911 call makes it clear that police went out on a call for an "injured cat." The dispatcher also tells police that the cat is injured.
Morganelli said his office has been flooded with calls and emails about Sugar's killing.
In the nearly 5-minute long recording of the police radio broadcast, Pursell radios back to a dispatcher when he arrives and just a few seconds later, reports that the cat had been killed.
"The cat is 10-07 in case you get any calls," Pursell says.
Several minutes later, he clears the call.
Sugar's killing has prompted Newhart to hire an attorney to get answers from Borough Council about the shooting and several online petitions calling for "Justice for Sugar."
Newhart's attorney, Jenna Fliszar, said Friday that information she had indicated Sugar was not injured.
She said Lienert told Newhart that while he initially feared the cat was injured when he called 911, he later realized that was not the case.
Fliszar also provided The Morning Call with a copy of a post-mortem report from a Northampton veterinarian that notes Sugar had no "obvious evidence of trauma," and an X-ray showed numerous "small metallic objects consistent with a shotgun or other gunshot trauma."
Newhart said after Sugar was killed, her body was dumped in a trash container by Pursell. He said the orange tabby was not a danger and had not shown any threatening behavior, other than hissing at Pursell.
Fliszar said Friday that she provided Morganelli a petition with more than 160,000 signatures calling for his office to file animal cruelty charges against Pursell.
(McCall.com - Feb 5, 2016)
Earlier:
No comments:
Post a Comment