July 10, 2008

Nine foam covered kittens were discovered entombed in a Las Vegas apartment complex retaining wall. The suspect is now facing cruelty charges. (Photo by Kristina Wood, Happy Home Animal Sanctuary)

LAS VEGAS -– Accusations and denials continue to fly in a bizarre case out of Las Vegas where nine kittens, hiding inside a brick wall near an apartment complex, were sealed inside the wall by urethane spray foam.

Northpointe Apartment Manager Sidney Oliveira says maintenance worker Richard Carter intentionally tried to harm the kittens by filling in holes in the wall with the hardening, expanding foam. However, Carter claims it was a tragic accident.

But no one is disputing that the kittens were sealed into the wall on Friday, June 1, and were discovered that Sunday after an anonymous tip to Happy Home Animal Sanctuary, an animal rescue organization.

After arriving on the scene, Happy Home volunteers discovered the life and death severity of the situation and alerted the apartment staff.

“They were trying to cut away the foam, which took hours, because they couldn’t get through it,” said Oliveira, who responded instantly to the volunteers’ phone call. “And then I just started going crazy and sledge hammering the wall to get them out because I could hear them crying.”

Efforts to coax the kittens out through other holes in the wall failed. But it was not because the kittens did not want to come, rather because they could not.

“It wasn’t a case where their feet were in foam and they could run around with foam on their feet and it was really bad,” said Ginger Mundry of Happy Home Animal Sanctuary, who is now fostering eight of the nine trapped cats. “It was a case of the cats (were) literally stuck in foam and the foam was stuck to the ground.”

The foam, in turn, was hardened inside the wall.

Once the kittens were rescued, they were rushed into emergency surgery, with their health and survival in serious jeopardy.

“I don’t think that if we had gotten there on Sunday that they wouldn’t have been able to survive another day,” volunteer Kristina Wood said. “I don’t know how long a five-week-old kitten would have been able to live without food, water or going to the bathroom because the vet actually had to remove (foam) from there because it was all foamed up.”

While the kittens were saved from continued depravation, intestinal and bladder pain from not being able to eat, drink, urinate or defecate for three days, the rescue came in the nick of time for a miracle.

Mundry said it took more than 55 hours of delicate cutting to free eight kittens from being encased in the hardened foam. But for one little kitten, no amount of cutting could have saved it. The ninth kitten’s body was 100 percent covered in the foam and it had to be euthanized.

The survivors, according to Mundry, have fully recovered from the ordeal and are bouncing around her home like happy, normal kittens. While some of the kittens have been slow to pick up weight, all are healthy.

Those who will be first up for adoption around July 20 are Ranger, Floyd, Grace, Victoria and Twitch, who got his name because his tail would always twitch as Mundry and her husband cut away his foam.

But their siblings, Butterfly, Lucky, Sierra and Feebie, who are weighing in at about two pounds, will need more time before adoption.

The story has outraged many in the Las Vegas area, including Richard Carter’s former boss at the apartment complex.

“I know he did it on purpose. I know for a fact that he’s been complaining about those cats forever to me and he was saying he was going to put down a pesticide, broken glass, rat traps, etc. He’s been talking about it forever, and he finally did it.”

Carter, for his part, went on the local NBC newscast to proclaim his innocence.

He also blogged a denial on RichardLeeCarter.com, were he wrote, “I want you to understand that this incident was in no way intentional … This accusation has entirely turned my life upside down in a matter of days. And thanks to the lack of hearing my side of the story … everyone pictures me as this monster-like, cat hating type of guy and it’s unbearable … Again, I am truly, deeply sorry this happened to those poor kittens.”

He added that it would never have been an issue if apartment management had been willing to spend money to replace the wall.

“Due to the company’s lack of willingness to spend the amount necessary to properly and efficiently fix the wall, this was my way of doing this without spending large amounts of money.”

Oliveira says the wall didn’t need filling in. She read the blog and called it “a bunch of crap.” She also said she had driven him to a mental health professional in the past, and labeled him “unstable.”

Others close to the case wouldn’t comment, citing the continuing investigation.

Carter will make his first court appearance this month to be arraigned for five counts of animal cruelty. If convicted, he faces up to two and a half years in jail.

For more information on the adopting the kittens, visit HappyHomeAnimalSanctuary.org

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