April 13, 2007
Sick: Jealous Man Kills Girlfriend's Cat
This is a horrible, horrible story: Allegedly jealous over the attention his girlfriend was giving her cat, Joe Petcka brutally beat up and killed an 8 pound cat. And Petcka, former Mets pitching prospect and now an actor, is 205 pounds, and from the looks of these photos, he's a built guy. Which makes us hope that when Petcka goes into the clink, someone 25 times his size messes him up.
Petcka allegedly yelled, "You love that cat more than you love me" during a fight with his girlfriend, a reporter for Sports Illustrated. From the NY Sun:
The alleged crime took place on March 27, [ASPCA Special Agent Joseph] Pentangelo said. On the night of the 26th, Mr. Petcka drank alcohol and got into a fight with his girlfriend, who wasn't identified by the ASPCA. The next day he entered her apartment in downtown Manhattan and attacked the cat, Mr. Pentangelo said. When the woman returned home, she found the cat dead under her nightstand and took him to the Battery Park Animal Hospital, where a veterinarian referred the case to the ASPCA.Petcka faces up to two years in prison for animal cruelty. What's almost sicker is that Petcka's lawyer claims the cat was the one to blame: "The cat bit him, then any injuries to the cat were in response to being bit."A necropsy determined that the cat died from multiple blows and likely was "in extreme pain" for up to an estimated 15 minutes, Mr. Pentangelo said. Norman, who weighed less than 8 pounds, suffered a broken leg, three broken ribs, broken teeth, and a lacerated tongue, and blood was found in his stomach and chest, he said.
April is Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Month (we think it should be every month) and here are 10 ways you can fight animal cruelty.
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what a dick. i so hope he goes to prison. can you imagine what it would be like to be in sing sing and have everybody know you were there for beating a cat? he's gonna be very popular.
what a sicko. isn't animal cruelty, especially when committed as a youngster, a precursor to a major antisocial personality disorder later in life? didn't a young G W Bush get jollies lighting firecrackers in frogs mouths as a youngster???
That's a sick man. Hope they trow the book at him...
Lay off the 'roids Joe.
This guy should be fed into a wood-chipper feet first, really slowly... say over the course of a week or so. I used to be a humanitarian, until I realized that humans aren't worth the air they breathe. Let's turn this guy into dog food!
@aknyc
Is there a single topic in this freaking universe in which a wacko can not bring in G.W. Bush? What the hell is wrong with people that everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, has to be tied to Bush in one way or another. It is a sick obsession and I now need no further proof that Bush Derangement Syndrome is a real psychiatric malady.
you have a short memory jmchez. bill clinton had the same power over rabid mouth frothing convervative wingnut types; i suspect you may be one of them. which would explain both your amnesia and your irritation with people like poster #2, becuase they remind you of yourself in a way that makes you very uncomfortable.
What an insecure jerk! I hope he gets the maximum sentence.
wow, I don't even know the kitty and I love the kitty more that that ass.
And, nothing wrong with bringing up bush and the firecracker in the frog's mouth. All white kids do that. If you have children just watch what happens in a playground. Do NOT go there by yourself, you'll be seen as a perv, especially in the summer.
I hope she doesn't go back to the a**. It's a proven fact that killing or hurting a loved one's animal is often the first step towards domestic abuse. First the cat, next her.
Poor cat.
Why isn't Al Sharpton outraged??!!!
blah
I bet if it was a dog, he wouldn't of done that.
He'll probably perform sodomy on it. MOST men love dogs more than cats. Notice my emphasis on MOST.
Yes, it was cruel, but it was a cat and this story is not worthy of news coverage.
Why do people express such outrage for the killing of an animal yet remain silent when it's a person who's killed?
SP, even if aknyc is amnesiac about the unreasonable loathing of clinton, it doesn't make him less correct about the unreasonable loathing of bush. as your response so clearly demonstrates, today's politics has much more to do with coalitional identity than anyone's policy choices.
jen, its really one of the more horrific aspects of our culture that we tolerate the abuse of prison inmates as a part of their "punishment." its even worse that its a source of humor and jokes. its appalling that people who would find corporal punishment abhorrent as a state sentence would also hope that he gets his deserts in prison.
what a creep. scary.
Wow, this guy is NOT a good candidate for the "Men Who Love Cats" feature on menandncats.com.
Yeah #15, I've noticed that. People getting killed never makes the news anymore.
From the Sun article:
"The NYPD said that Mr. Petcka has a previous arrest for a domestic assault more than four years ago. Just after midnight on September 28, 2002, he allegedly grabbed his girlfriend by the throat and threw her out of his apartment, before slamming the door on her finger, police said. A neighbor of Mr. Petcka's at 144 Spencer St. in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn said the woman had to have her finger re-attached."
No, no no no noooo...
I can't stand this!
ass-in-nine, you certainly did name yourself well.
#15, #19 - i agree completely!
jen,
while i'm not trying to justify this man's actions, i think that using "horrible, horrible story" to describe this a little over the top.
i don't recall gothamist posting anything about lucila rojas, a 25 year old (former) mother, who, in december of last year, killed her two week old baby by suffocating him with a blanket. she then tossed the dead infant in a garbage dumpster.
i'm curious how this story ranks on your scale of disgust? seriously, are these crimes even comparable?
Yeah, Assface, why is automatically assumed that if you express outrage over a cat's tragic death that therefore do NOT express outrage over a person's tragic death?
Look, I know that you people can't grasp this due to the being self-absorbed and self serving, but some people care about both people AND animals! A lot!
Just look, they can't comprehend it!
la leone,
please repost your sentiments in the comments of the story about the dead baby. oh, sorry, there isn't one. dead cat 1 - dead human 0
cat wins.
love,
the assface
p.s.
killing a cat is wrong; killing a baby is unspeakable. wanna argue that point, jerk?
We've sadly posted about the deaths of babies and children before. They are terribly tragic, as well. I supposed I wrote this also as a cat owner, who cherishes the unconditional love I get from my cat.
I wish I could focus on other incidents, but sometimes there's simply not enough time or manpower to do so. The odd thing is that when I do write about those things, I also get a lot of flak for only focusing on depressing stories.
solution: more shake shack posts!
nick, they were going to put up more shake shack posts, but the lines were too long.
Uh... you mean this Gothamist post from December? Guess what it's about? A baby thrown out of a window. Maybe you should search before you speak?
Assface/Expostfacto/whatever.
Don't lash out at me because there is no story posted about the dead baby here. Of COURSE it's tragic and unspeakable. I'll simply repost what a wrote before, since it didn't sink in the first time and has for some reason caused you to call me a jerk. (And if it's because I said "Assface, well this post is obviously addressing Ass-in-ine):
Repost:
Yeah, Assface, why is automatically assumed that if you express outrage over a cat's tragic death that therefore do NOT express outrage over a person's tragic death?
Look, I know that you people can't grasp this due to the being self-absorbed and self serving, but some people care about both people AND animals! A lot!
Just look, they can't comprehend it!
But of course, you're now probably going to argue that it's not the baby YOU want to discuss. If I remember correctly, there were at least two - three horribly tragic incidents of newborns being thrown out of windows this last December.
And look at what one of the comments in the thread about the baby from December said: "Why is this blogged. It is such a horrible story. Why analyze and write threads on a 14 yr old. How can anyone pass judgement on a 14 year old who is a baby."
So, let's just go back to nice posts about highrises and bands; forget about both dead cats and babies, why don't we? Let's just ignore that bad things happen to both people and animals?
Geez, sometimes the posters here make me wanna scream.
This guy is why New York brought back the death penalty.
Just burn him.
Leave it to a stupid roid-filled baseball player to misinterpret "punching the kitty".
I think everyone would agree that the death of a child is a horrible thing. That's not an issue. There have been posts about the murders and accidental deaths of children before, because unfortunately there are so many of them - and that is a horrible tragedy.
But to many of us who love animals and have been brought up with pets as being a part of the family, the murder - and this was an outright brutal murder - of a pet is a horrific incident.
If you peel back an additional layer, you can also see that coverage/discussion of this is good; because even if you are someone who is rather cold and apathetic toward the death of an animal (or, at the very least, finds this thread pointless), the man who beat this animal is obviously someone who might very well do the same thing to a child (if the child made him jealous) or a woman (as noted by previous history of domestic abuse).
The bottom line: outright cruelty on any scale is horrific, and if ignored, can manifest into something greater. If this guy were to be ignored, it might very well be a child that he throws out a window - and I suppose that for some that might make more new-worthy threads; but I would prefer to have one less instance of that - I think we all would.