Dayton police officers on patrol Nov. 7 spotted a car run a stop sign.
When the officers tried to pull over the driver, he did not stop. While fleeing from police, the driver ran over and killed a cat in the street, according to the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office.
Eventually the driver parked the vehicle. He got out and ran but police were able to catch and take him into custody.
The driver, a 22-year-old from Harrison Twp., was indicted Dec. 3 by a Montgomery County Common Pleas Court grand jury on felony charges of failure to comply with the order or signal of a police officer, cruelty to companion animals and obstructing official business plus a misdemeanor count of resisting arrest.
The driver is free on home electric monitoring.
In 2016, the Ohio General Assembly passed what’s known as “Goddard’s Law” that gave prosecutors the choice whether to charge a person with a first-degree misdemeanor or a new fifth-degree felony for causing “serious physical harm” to a companion animal, according to an Ohio Legislative Service Commission brief.
The Ohio Supreme Court in October expanded the felony animal cruelty law to protect all cats and dogs when it unanimously ruled the law applies no matter whether the dog or cat is owned or “kept.”
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