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Vine Cat-Kicker Arrested, Charged with Cruelty to Animals

A viral animal abuse video has led to an arrest, and the perpetrator faces a maximum of 60 days in jail on a charge of cruelty to animals. 17-year-old Walter Easley will be back in court on September ...
Vine Cat-Kicker Arrested, Charged with Cruelty to Animals
Written by Josh Wolford
  • A viral animal abuse video has led to an arrest, and the perpetrator faces a maximum of 60 days in jail on a charge of cruelty to animals.

    17-year-old Walter Easley will be back in court on September 12th to face charges after a Vine video that shows Easley kicking a cat went viral with the help of 4chan, reddit, and plenty of news outlets.

    “Look at this goddamn cat on my porch. Get the f*ck off my porch,” said Walter Easley before kicking a kitten off his porch and into his yard.

    According to officials, the small cat shown in the video was found unharmed, and authorities took other animals from the residence into custody.

    After the video went viral, a petition was created on the Care2 petition site, demanding Easley be brought to justice. It has garnered over 3,200 signatures.

    “Please bring this scum to justice,” said the petitioner. “Part of me is glad he posted that original Vine, it makes finding creatures like him a lot easier. I’m even gladder he’s dumb enough to publicly post what state he’s in!”

    Easley quickly deleted the Vine and protected his Twitter account as soon as things started to take a turn, but there were plenty of GIFs and YouTube videos of the Vine around for angry animal lovers to scour. You know, you can’t really ever delete anything from the internet.

    Apparently, Easley has provided a pretty weak defense for his cat-kicking.

    From the Times and Democrat:

    According to an Orangeburg County incident report, the youth said the video had been edited. He said in reality, “he did not actually kick the cat as hard as it appears on the video.” He claimed he only tossed the cat into the air with his foot rather than kicking it.

    When the officers asked how the cat “ended up airborne and flipping through the air,” the youth said he “did throw the cat off the porch to make it look like he kicked it for the video.”

    I’m not sure throwing a cat off a porch is going to endear Mr. Easley to many animals lovers either. Rule #1 of the internet: don’t mess with cats, dude.

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