Luna is a small tabby kitten who is alive today only because Lee County Sheriff's deputies walked in at the right moment. Investigators say a man named David Charette Jr. had been abusing kittens in his Pine Manor, Florida home for over a year — smothering a one-month-old kitten with a bleach-soaked rag, killing a three-month-old kitten with a blow dryer, and using the animals as psychological weapons against his own teenage daughter. Deputies arrived to find him trying to drown and beat Luna, the last kitten in the house, before she was rescued and rushed to an animal hospital.
David Charette Jr. now faces a single felony count of aggravated animal cruelty under Florida law, even though investigators allege he tortured and killed at least three separate kittens over more than a year. Florida law allows prosecutors to file a separate charge for each animal victim. Right now, that isn't happening.
I'm asking State Attorney Amira Fox, who leads the State Attorney's Office for Florida's 20th Judicial Circuit, to file a felony aggravated animal cruelty charge for every kitten this man is accused of killing or maiming, not one count that treats a year of alleged torture as a single crime. Research cited in coverage of this case shows animal cruelty and domestic violence are deeply linked: pet abuse was documented in 88 percent of families investigated for child abuse, and 71 percent of domestic violence cases involved a pet being targeted. Undercharging this case doesn't just fail Luna and the kittens who didn't survive, it fails the child who was allegedly terrorized in that house too.
Luna survived. She deserves a prosecutor who charges her abuser for every life he's accused of taking. Please sign and ask State Attorney Amira Fox to bring the full weight of Florida law against David Charette Jr., with a separate charge for each kitten he is accused of harming.
