CLEARWATER, Florida — Thursday morning, officers charged 22-year-old Joshua Daniel Pena-Cedillo with felony animal cruelty.
He killed his cat, cut off its head and taped it to a stick in his back yard, police say. The cat’s name was Cinnamon.
Pena-Cedillo told investigators he initially tried to strangle Cinnamon to death but failed—so he decapitated the animal with an ax.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, Pena-Cedillo displayed the stick ‘next to the head of a stuffed animal that was also mounted on a stick.’
He reportedly told cops he wanted to “show what he was capable of to someone he was living with.”
Pena-Cedillo is in the country illegally and is being held at the request of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
