SARATOGA SPRINGS, Utah -- A 19-year-old was arrested in Saratoga Springs after a camera caught him violently abusing a house cat, police said Monday.
On April 14 Saratoga Springs police responded to a home where the resident told them she caught her son’s friend, Jordan Lindquist, abusing her pet on a nanny cam.
The complainant told police she put the camera in her son’s room because she suspected her cat was being abused, according to a probable cause statement.
“Her cat had been into the veterinarian’s and had accrued hundreds of dollars in vet bills because of injuries sustained over a period of time,” the statement
indicates. “The complainant had become increasing worried the injuries her cat was sustaining may have been inflicted by her houseguest, Jordan Lindquist, a friend of her son’s, rather than by natural means.”
The woman was not home at the time, but she watched Lindquist assault and beat one of her cats remotely from the nanny cam, according to the statement.
“Video showed unambiguous recorded evidence of Jordan entering his friend’s room, closing the curtains so he couldn’t be seen from outside the residence, and fishing a black cat out from under his friend’s bed,” the release states.
Lindquist was then seen throwing the cat on the bed where he continued to punch the animal.
“Jordan continued the abuse and cruelty against the animal by shaking it forcefully,” police reported. “Officers watching the video believed if the cat had been a baby, it would probably have been killed because of the viciousness and violence of the shaking and from the punches to the head it sustained.”
The woman told police she called her son and told him to tell Lindquist to stop hurting their cat.
Lindquist stopped and began speaking to his friend as if nothing had happened, police state.
The woman’s son could be heard on the recording yelling at Lindquist to get out of the house. As he was being yelled at, Lindquist seemed to realize there was nanny cam in the room because he covered it with a t-shirt, according to the statement.
The suspect left the residence before the woman or police arrived on scene.
“The depravity and viciousness of the abuse to the complainant’s cat was extremely violent and was obviously causing severe suffering and pain to the animal,” the statement indicates. “The domestic cat is a companion animal and it suffered torture at Jordan Lindquist’s hands by being viciously beaten.”
Lindquist was booked into Utah County Jail on Friday and charged with one count of animal cruelty, a third-degree felony.
