Reported by Oren Yaniv this week in the New York Daily News:
Wednesday, May 25th 2011, 1:51 PM
A cat killer convicted using DNA evidence was slapped with a six-year
sentence Wednesday – and will likely soon be deported.
The Brooklyn judge lashed into Trinidadian immigrant Angelo Monderoy,
who said he torched his super’s beloved tabby, Tommy Two Times, out of
boredom.
“To torture and kill an animal because you were bored?” Justice Michael
Gary asked in bitter bewilderment.
“There’s no way the world should not know what Mr. Monderoy did here.”
A jury found that Monderoy and his friend grabbed Tommy Two Times, took
him to an abandoned apartment in their Crown heights tenement, doused
him with lighter fluid and lit him afire in the 2008 attack.
“This was not a whim, not a fleeting decision in a teenager’s mind,”
said prosecutor Josh Charlton.
The guilty verdict in March marked the first time DNA evidence led to a
conviction in an animal abuse case in the history of the state and
possibly the nation – Tommy was found badly burned outside the tenement
and investigators were able to trace the crime back to Monderoy’s lair.
That evidence also helped bring more serious burglary charges, for which
Monderoy, 20, got two to six years upstate.
He also received the max of two years for aggravated animal abuse and up
to four years for arson, all running concurrently.
Because he’s been jailed for more than two years awaiting trial, he’s
already eligible for parole, but will likely face deportation once out
of prison, officials said.
Monderoy’s defense lawyer had asked that he be treated as a youthful
offender and that the court seal his record.
Gary refused – even after Monderoy apologized.
“I’d like to say I’m sorry for what happened,” Monderoy told the judge.
“What I did was wrong.”