Sylvie and Bernard T., a retired couple from Dijon, were convicted on Thursday December 19 by the Dijon criminal court for acts of cruelty to domestic animals. They appeared for having thrown two kittens onto the roadwhile they were driving on Boulevard Carnot in Dijon. They will have to pay a fine of 1,000 euros, as well as 1,200 euros to the two animal protection associations, which have filed civil suits, the Stéphane Lamart association and the National Society for the Defense of Animals, for moral damage.
The events took place on July 7, 2024. It was motorists, witnesses to the scene, who alerted the police. The two kittens died instantly, due to the violence of the shock.as demonstrated by the veterinary examination. It was thanks to video surveillance that the couple was identified, but they deny the facts. “I have never thrown a cat out of my car window”asserts Sylvie T., supported by her husband, prosecuted for complicity, who asserts: “My wife loves cats, she would never hurt them!” For them, there is only one explanation: the two kittens hid under the hood of the car and accidentally fell onto the road.
“We cannot allow attacks on animal welfare to continue!”
An explanation which did not convince the prosecutor. It first relies on video surveillance which, even if it is filmed from the other side of the street, shows a black mass appearing on the road after the passage of the couple’s car. Then, a motorist claims to have seen an arm throw this same black mass onto the road, through the car window. The other kitten, all white, was found a few meters further away. Finally, when the investigators carried out a search of the couple’s home, their son, aged around thirty, spontaneously asked: “What do people risk if they kill kittens?”a sentence that appeals to investigators. “We know well that sensitivity to animal suffering varies from one individual to another, but we cannot allow attacks on animal welfare to continue!”says the prosecutor at the hearing. “We need to change our mentality: before, in the countryside, we drowned kittens, but that is no longer possible today.”
For the civil parties’ lawyer, Maître Grillon, the couple’s guilt was in no doubt: “For the first kitten, you have the testimony of a motorist who was driving just behind and who distinctly saw a hand coming out of the open window and just afterwards, as if by chance, there was a small black mass on the edge of the And this little black mass was a kitten. And we can add that the video surveillance cameras clearly show that before their car passed, there was no black mass on the road, but only afterwards. there was this little one kitten! The defendants claim that the kittens were hidden in the engine and that they fell, as if by chance, given the seriousness of the facts, it is much easier to lie! The couple’s lawyer, Maître Legentil, has, for his part, already announced that he would appeal the conviction.
