Dad jailed after ‘torching kittens with a blow dryer’ in entrance of screaming teen

David Charette Jr. was captured on police bodycam footage outside his house after allegedly killing two cats and injuring one more in front of his sobbing teenage daughter

A dad has been charged with animal cruelty after he allegedly slaughtered two kittens in front of his teen daughter.

Florida-based David Charette Jr., 48, committed the crimes as a form of punishment, police say. Body camera footage shows Charette outside his Pine Manor home shortly after he is accused of killing the felines. “The cat is in perfectly healthy condition. I have to give the cat a bath because it soils itself in the cage,” Charette could be heard saying on the police video.

But detectives said the 14-year-old girl inside the property told a very different story. “The daughter says that when she acts up or when she’s in trouble, her father kills her kittens. This is sickening to me,” Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said.

The 14-year-old called 911 on Wednesday this week, after claiming she watched her dad hold a 2-month-old kitten named Luna under running water.

The girl also told police Charette hit the kitten with a nail polish bottle and forced it into a clothes dryer. Luna survived and is recovering. “It’s ridiculous. It’s horrible. It’s sad,” one neighbour said.

“Two of the kittens that he killed were buried in the back,” said Marceno. He said another cat died in June after being repeatedly struck and left on a bleach soaked rag while another kitten passed away after suffering burns from a blow dryer.

Charette is now in jail, charged with aggravated animal cruelty. Family members say they never reported the alleged crimes because they feared what Charette would do to them.

“Killed in front of the child, it’s horrible. It’s sad. It’s heartbreaking and it just makes me very upset,” the neighbour added.