‘Goddard’s Law’ Invoked in Cat Cruelty Case
Chester Township resident Hayyal Ighneim faces charges of animal abuse for repeatedly driving over his cat and killing it.
**Editor’s note: information in the following article may be disturbing for some readers.**
Chester Township resident Hayyal Ighneim faces charges of animal abuse for repeatedly driving over his cat and killing it.
Video surveillance shows the accused “purposefully driving his vehicle over” a cat, causing serious physical harm to the cat, according to a complaint filed in the Chardon Municipal Court.
“The cat was allowed to suffer for a time until the accused drove his vehicle over the cat several more times, resulting in the death of the cat,” the complaint alleges.
Geauga County Sheriff Scott Hildenbrand said a maintenance worker at Jennings at Notre Dame Village Apartments was notified of a dead cat in front of a dumpster.
“He went over there and realized this cat had been run over more than once, so he went back the next day and reviewed all the surveillance video,” Hildenbrand said. “That’s when we got the picture of the guy in his car, and him standing next to it.”
Hildenbrand said the sheriff’s office put an image of Ighneim and his silver SUV on its social media pages and asked the public to help identify him.
“He showed up at the country western show at the fairgrounds this weekend. Our deputies recognized the vehicle and him and questioned him, and he admitted it,” the sheriff said. “We take this very serious. The video is very disturbing.”
Ighneim is alleged to have brought the cat to the residential complex because he was having trouble with the cat urinating on things at his home, Hildenbrand said.
“And for some reason, this was the decision he made, rather than take it to a vet,” he said.
Ighneim was arraigned Aug. 7 before Judge Forrest Burt virtually and represented by attorney Theodore Amata. He was released on a personal reconnaissance bond and allowed to travel out of state for business this week but ordered to return for an Aug. 16 hearing.
Burt also ordered Ighneim, who’s 51 years old, to relocate either himself or his remaining pets — two dogs and a cat — as a condition of his release. Ighneim’s daughter, who was in the audience, volunteered to take him in as his case moves forward. The two dogs and cat will remain with Ighneim’s partner and her two children.
This is only the second case the county has attempted to prosecute under Goddard’s Law, a 2016 law named for beloved Cleveland meteorologist and animal advocate Dick Goddard.
“Goddard’s Law gave prosecutors the choice, depending on the facts of the case, whether to charge a person accused of companion animal cruelty with either the already established first-degree misdemeanor prohibition or a new fifth-degree felony prohibition for causing ‘serious physical harm’ to a companion animal,” the Ohio Legislative Service Commission said in a Member’s Brief prepared for Ohio legislators.
The LSC said while the law makes causing serious physical harm to a companion animal a fifth-degree felony, it does not label it an offense of violence for sentencing purposes or exempt the crime from the law requiring courts to sentence offenders to a community-control sanction in lieu of prison time for fourth- and fifth-degree felonies.
“Therefore, unless an offender meets certain criteria (e.g., repeat offender, etc.), the courts likely will sentence the offender to a community-control sanction in lieu of prison time,” the LSC said.
