This Monday, September 26th, the trial begins against the man with the surnames Saborío Soto accused of killing a cat after throwing it off a balcony, almost 30 meters high. The hearing will take place before the Criminal Court of the Second Judicial Circuit of San José, in Goicoechea, starting at 8 a.m. m.
According to the Animal Welfare Law (approved in 2017), the maximum prison sentence established in these cases is two years. In February 2020, the Flagrancy Court of Pavas sentenced Fausto Rojas Araya to one year in prison for animal abuse and rape of a dog named Ala.
In the opinion of the president of the National Autonomous Cinological Association of Costa Rica (ACAN), Rubén Rodríguez, there is no other acceptable sentence for this case than the maximum.
“We want him to go to jail. We want the maximum penalty. We are not going to allow this to go unpunished,” Rodríguez said. ACAN is one of the plaintiffs in this criminal trial.
The case
The events occurred in an apartment building in Curridabat in November 2019 and triggered the animal defense groups, who demanded justice for the death of the animal. The same clamor reached social networks after the broadcast of a video where the precise moment in which the animal is thrown into the void is observed.
As determined by the autopsy of the Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ), the blow from the fall caused the feline fractures, dislocations, pulmonary contusions and hemorrhages, all of which were severe, which caused the animal to die a few minutes after being thrown.
Precisely that is the only evidence that the complaint will have for the trial this Monday. “The proving event of his guilt will be the video that was released. We think that is enough,” the ACAN representative added.
“We are not going to negotiate anything. We have not negotiated until now and we are not going to do it. He (the defendant) sought an alternative resolution of the conflict but we do not want any Civil Action, we do not want money, we want the maximum penalty,” Rodríguez emphasized.
To kick off the hearing, which will be public, ACAN will bring together a small group of people with relevant information on animal welfare; however, he clarified that their presence there will be merely informative and awareness-raising and not protest.
“We are not encouraging the riot because sometimes violent events are triggered there and we do not agree with the violence. The only thing we want is for justice to be done,” he concluded.
I´m Sorry
At the beginning of August 2020, the man accused of throwing the cat off the balcony apologized in a statement that he made public and in which he placed himself at the orders of the Attorney General’s Office.
He mentioned that the acts responded to strong emotional crises that he was suffering. “I was in one of my worst crises and had even tried to take my life, so I ended up hospitalized in a San José hospital,” he said, among other details, in the release. In August 2020, Saborío Soto was arrested in Escazú and later released with precautionary measures.
