Mutilated kitten found in mailbox in Hawkins County

By Kevin Castle
Published February 13th, 2010

ROGERSVILLE – A fourth incident of animal cruelty involving cats in Hawkins County was discovered Saturday morning when a Rogersville resident found a burned kitten inside his mailbox.

Leslie Lunsford, of 1741 Burem Road, said her husband had gone to check the mail before leaving to go on an errand when he discovered the remains of a 6-month-old kitten wrapped in a plastic shopping bag.

“The cat had its throat cut. You could see a lot of blood, and you could tell it had been set on fire. It was really upsetting,” said Lunsford. She contacted the Hawkins County Sheriff’s Department who took a report on the incident over the phone.

Multiple attempts by the Times-News to contact the sheriff’s department for information on the incident were unsuccessful.

Lunsford said that a scarecrow she had placed in the front of the home for decoration had been set on fire in October, so she said the eeriness of a second incident at her home was no coincidence.

“This is just a scary situation. There is some crazy person out there doing these things. It was hard to handle someone coming onto your property and setting something on fire, but this is just cruel. I just feel like it might be some mean kids doing this. I hope someone can get this person or people arrested,” she said.

It marked the second time in nearly four months that a cruelty case involving cats has been discovered in the locality.

Workers at a Hawkins County waste convenience center in the Lakeview community in November found a kitten inside a trash recepticle with its paws taped together with duct tape.

Two weeks earlier, they had found a box sealed with duct tape that contained two kittens. The box was inside a metal bin collected from Midway Recycling on Caney Valley Road. A second sealed box with a kitten inside was found later that day.

While one of the kittens ran away after being freed from the tape, the other three were adopted by employees of the convenience center.

Also in November, a 17-year-old Cherokee High School student was banned from campus by a Hawkins County Juvenile Court judge after a criminal investigation was launched following a cell phone video that was discovered that showed him stabbing a cat 17 times then stomping on its head.

Movie and television actress Elaine Hendrix has offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those involved in the November incident.

“I am the guardian of two cats, and I am sickened by the idea of someone duct taping their paws together and dumping them – leaving them to die a horrifically cruel death,” Hendrix stated in a press release through the In Defense of Animals organization, of which she is a member.

“Particularly disturbing is the deliberation of the abuse — someone put thought and effort into their torturous actions. It’s sadistic.”

Hendrix, a native of Morristown and best known for her appearance in the 1998 Disney movie “The Parent Trap” with Lindsey Lohan and Dennis Quaid, staged an animal rights protest in front of West Town Mall in Knoxville earlier this month and is scheduled to have a puppy mill protest sometime this week in the city.

Anyone with information regarding these cases can contact the Hawkins County Sheriff’s Department at (423) 272-4848.

Times-News staff writer Jeff Bobo and the Knoxville News-Sentinel contributed to this story.