An Ohio woman who ate a cat in a viral video that fueled rumors that Haitian migrants were eating pets was sentenced to a year in prison on Monday after a judge singled her out for the gruesome act.
Allexis Ferrell, 27, was arrested at a Canton housing complex on August 16 when she was caught on police body camera footage crouching on all fours and biting a cat.
Police later determined that Ferrell smashed the cat’s head with her paw and then began eating it, according to a police report obtained by the Canton Repository.
“I observed blood on Allexis’ feet, hands and fur on her lips,” an officer who responded to the scene wrote in the report.
Ferrell, a mother of three, was charged in August with cruelty to companion animals. Fox8 reports.
She initially pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but changed her plea Monday after a psychological report showed she could understand the legal proceedings and assist in her own defense.
Yet the report also found that Ferrell is irritable, aggressive and deceitful, lacks remorse, shows a reckless disregard for the safety of others and fails to conform to social norms regarding law-abiding behavior by repeatedly committing criminal acts perform, according to the Repository. .
Allexis Ferrell, 27, was sentenced Monday to a year in prison on charges of cruelty to companion animals
“To me, you represent a significant danger to your community,” Stark County Common Pleas Judge Frank Forchione told Ferrell during Monday’s sentencing hearing.
“This is disgusting to me,” he continued. ‘I mean anyone would do this to an animal.
‘And an animal is like a child. I don’t know if you understand that or not.
“They bring a lot of love to a lot of people. They have no voice. But their voice today is me. I’m going to practice this voice very loudly.’
The judge went on to say he could not express “the disappointment, shock and disgust this crime has brought me.”
“I don’t know what would make someone want to eat a cat,” he said, with Ferrell interrupting to say that didn’t necessarily happen, as a spokesperson for the Stark County Prosecutor’s Office said she didn’t have time to to eat the entire cat. feline as the police were quickly called to the scene.
Forchione concluded by calling Ferrell a national disgrace as he handed down his sentence, which she will serve consecutively with a separate 18-month prison sentence the mother of three previously faced for a 2019 theft and an endangerment charge from a child from last year.
“You have embarrassed this province,” he said. “You have embarrassed this nation. More importantly, you embarrassed yourself.”
Ferrell, of Canton, Ohio, was caught on police body camera footage on August 16 crouching on all fours and biting a cat.
She initially pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but changed her plea Monday
Following Ferrell’s arrest, many conservatives seized on the gruesome body camera footageo make a backup Claims Haitian Migrants ‘Eat Pets’ in Springfield ahead of the presidential election – despite Ferrell being from Canton, which is 170 miles from Springfield.
The rumor was even echoed by Trump when he debated Vice President Kamala Harris in September.
“They eat the dogs in Springfield,” Trump said. ‘The people who came in. They eat the cats.
“They eat, they eat the pets of the people who live there.
“And this is what is happening in our country.”
When later told by ABC moderator David Muir that there had been no credible reports to authorities, the ex-president insisted he had “seen people on television.”
“The people on television are saying my dog was taken and used as food,” he added.
President-elect Donald Trump claimed during a September debate that Haitian migrants ate pets in Springfield, Ohio
It later emerged that a Springfield woman first fueled the rumors with a social media post, saying her “neighbor informed me that her daughter’s friend had lost her cat,” only to find the pet ” on a branch” outside the home of a Haitian family.
But when asked about the claims, the woman, Erika Lee, relented NewsGuard that she heard the rumor through her neighbor Kimberly Newton, who heard it through a friend, who heard it from the alleged cat owner.
Newton then said she “wasn’t sure I was the most credible source.”
“I don’t actually know the person who lost the cat,” she told NewsGuard, a company that combats misinformation. “I don’t have any proof.”
She noted that the cat’s owner was “an acquaintance of a friend.”