Woman finds animal Monday in her trailer park

By KEVIN CHIRI

Editor and Publisher

LAPLACE – Brenna Kruest is like a lot of people. She is an animal lover.

So imagine her horror on Monday morning when she walked outside her trailer in Colonial Trailer Park and saw a striped cat with a long arrow through it. Clearly the cat had died near another trailer, where it had a water and food bowl outside for it.

“This is just so upsetting,” Kruest said. “It’s so unacceptable to see this kind of behavior anywhere, not just here.”

Kruest said she saw another trailer park tenant practicing his bow and arrow at the back of the trailer park on Sunday evening, shooting at a target set up against an area where there were trees and woods. She said that her husband had gone down to talk to the man, asking him to be careful since there were cats, some puppies and even small children in the area.

“But they had been drinking and didn’t seem to like us saying anything about it,” she said.

The next morning Kruest went outside onto her patio area, looked to the trailer behind her, and saw the cat with the arrow through it, obviously dead.

“I have three cats myself, and I couldn’t imagine finding one of them like this,” she said. “This trailer park is very nice, mostly with older people, but to see this is just so upsetting.”

Kruest said she filed a police report with the St. John Sheriff’s Office, which was confirmed by Public

Information Officer Major Mike Tregre. The charge for anyone arrested for the offense would be aggravated cruelty to an animal, Tregre said,

There was no one home at the trailer where Kruest said the bow and arrow practice was going on, when officers went by on Monday morning, but Tregre said they will investigate the case to see if anyone will be charged.

The cat belonged to Dan Scanlon, a senior citizen who has lived in the park since 1978. He said he adopted the cat five years ago, and called it “Dummy” since some other people who owned the cat had left it behind when they moved out.

“The cat followed me around like a dog,” Scanlon said. “I’m just mad to see this kind of thing. I liked the cat a lot. He used to just sit out here on my porch, and was very friendly to everyone. He never did anything wrong to anyone.”

Colonial Trailer Park owner Stanley Livings said he plans to talk to the owner of the trailer at that location, but can’t assume anything yet.

“There’s always two sides to every story and we don’t know if it was an accident or what,” he said. “Obviously we don’t want this going on here, since we’ve had this park since 1969 and try to run a good trailer park. If someone like that continues anything like that, we would ask them to move out.”

As for now, Kruest told Scanlon that she would take care of burying the innocent cat.

“I moved out here from New Orleans to get away from the crime in the city. It’s nice and safe out here in LaPlace, and we like it. But something like this is terrible. I mean, what if it was my own pet?” she said. “I just hope something is done to whoever did this.”