A Galloway Township man was sentenced to four years in prison Thursday for holding a gun to a man’s head and then abusing a kitten to the point it had to be euthanized.
He must serve a year before he is eligible for parole.
Michael Ciarla, now 30, was on pretrial release for the gun incident when he slammed his girlfriend’s kitten in a door so many times that its legs were detached from its body, Assistant Prosecutor Daniel Davis told the judge.
The vet theorized that the cat had to be struck at least a dozen times, Davis said.
"(The word) torture really doesn't do it justice," he said. “The only thing holding its legs on was its skin.”
Defense attorney James Swift admitted the cat case was disturbing even to him, but that his client is an addict whose actions were done in the fog of alcohol.
He painted a picture of a patriot who saved a man’s life while helping with hurricane relief in Florida as part of the N.J. National Guard. If not for alcohol, Ciarla would still have his military career, according to Swift.
“Mr. Swift may not consider it a real firearm, but the victim did in that case when he felt the barrel of that gun pressed up against the back of his head and he heard the trigger cock,” Davis told the judge.
The victim told police he would “never forget that sound.”
When police arrived, Ciarla was hiding under a car, and refused to come out.
“He was armed with, again, what looked like a handgun,” Davis said.
Officers would later tell the prosecutor how dangerous the situation was “for the defendant,” he said. “How close he came to getting shot because he wouldn’t obey their commands.”
Ciarla was jailed, but released following a detention hearing in that case.
Then, his girlfriend brought her kitten to the vet, where it could not be saved.
“I accept full responsibility for the actions I have committed,” Ciarla told the judge.
But that is not true, said Assistant Prosecutor Lynn Heyer.
First, Ciarla claimed that the incident outside the bar happened because he had been trying to “distribute cocaine,” and that the victim attempted to take it from him.
Video surveillance, however, showed it was Ciarla who approached him, Heyer said.
He even tried to claim the kitten was accidentally injured, even after admitting to the animal abuse charge.
The cat had “a massive amount of fleas” when she tried to escape her bath and was caught by the door when he tried to slam it to stop her, Ciarla said, according to Heyer.
“We took her to the vet,” he claimed.
But Ciarla never went to the vet, Heyer said. Instead, his girlfriend made the trip alone the next morning, after the kitten had “suffered a good 20 hours.”
Days after his arrest for torturing the kitten, Ciarla called his girlfriend from jail, which records all phone calls.
“Can you just go tell the cops that you found the cat like that outside?” he asked her.
He would no longer have been under the influence of alcohol at that time, Davis pointed out.
A charge of witness tampering was dropped as part of the plea agreement.
Heyer also presented the court with new disorderly persons charges from earlier this year.
Hammonton police were called to West End Grill & Bar at 2:41 a.m. March 19.
Despite a court-imposed curfew and a prohibition from establishments that serve alcohol, Ciarla was there drunk and refusing to pay his bar tab, Heyer said.
He finally agreed to leave, but then started throwing beer bottles outside at cars, according to the pending municipal charges.
Ciarla was sentenced to three years in prison for the attack on the kitten, with no term of parole ineligibility. He has 92 days of credit for his time served in the Atlantic County Justice Facility on that charge.
He was given 365 days for the gun, with 99 days of credit. He must serve that entire time.
Judge Bernard DeLury agreed with the state and ordered those terms be consecutive instead of concurrent.
He then ordered Ciarla taken into custody. One of the women among the family there supporting him started to sob loudly. Swift would not confirm if she was the girlfriend.
“Can I hug him?” she asked, but was not allowed.
She left the court yelling about it being unfair.
Ciarla is now in the county jail awaiting transfer to state prison.
