A security guard stabbed more than a dozen cats in a spate of killings that traumatised their owners, a court was told today.
Steve Bouquet, 54, of Brighton, would allegedly approach pets near their homes before pulling out a knife and stabbing them with force.
Bouquet, a shopping centre guard, is accused of killing nine cats and seriously injuring seven in the city in 2018 and 2019. He denies 16 charges of criminal damage, as the law deems cats and other animals to be property, and is being tried in his absence at Chichester crown court.
Rowan Jenkins, for the prosecution, said that police had begun an investigation after reports of domestic cats being “deliberately stabbed” in the street.
He said: “Some owners found that their cats were still alive and were able to take timely action to save them by rushing them to the vets. Not all were able to find them in time.”
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Vets treating the cats ruled out car accidents or falling from trees as possible causes of the injuries.
Jenkins said: “These were penetrative and clean wounds which in the opinion of the vets were caused by a sharp knife. Someone was deliberately inflicting these injuries. Whoever was responsible was not just causing suffering to animals themselves but caused understandable trauma to owners which affected them emotionally and financially.”
He told the jury that for almost a year police had been unable to identify the cat killer as more than a dozen animals were stabbed. In May 2019, however, Bouquet was caught on CCTV attacking Hendrix, a nine-month-old black kitten that was sitting on a wall near its home, he said. The camera had been installed by Alan Levy, whose cat Hannah had died after a similar attack in October 2018.
The images showed a passerby stop by Hendrix, Jenkins said, adding: “He appears to show affection but as he goes he seems to take something from his rucksack and you will see a sudden jerk from the defendant’s arm which is the moment he stabs Hendrix with force.
“Hendrix immediately gets to his feet and flees to his home. The defendant is seen to rearrange his rucksack and walks past the camera.”
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Bouquet returned minutes later and looked directly at the CCTV camera and came back again repeatedly over the following two days to look at the camera again.
Hendrix’s owner, Stuart Montgomery, saw that it was hurt and took it to a vet. The cat was bleeding heavily from both sides of its abdomen and immediately underwent surgery where the vet found lacerations to both kidneys and was unable to save it.
When the owner discovered that his neighbour had a CCTV camera trained on the street the two of them viewed the images of the stabbing.
Two days later, Levy saw Bouquet walking past his house again on his CCTV camera and immediately called police. Officers who had been hunting the cat killer for almost a year attended.
Bouquet was stopped several streets away, searched and a Leatherman multitool was found in his possession. He was arrested and taken into custody and later charged with the stabbings. Feline DNA was found on the blade of the Leatherman, the jury was told, and data from Bouquet’s mobile phone showed that he had been in the vicinity of each of the stabbings at the time they occurred.
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The trial continues.