Man who fed feral cats lost his temper and shot a police officer several times

This is a follow-up story about a man who lived in a neighbourhood in America, specifically, 200 block of Avenida De La Vista, a residential area in unincorporated Indialantic in Brevard County, USA. He liked to feed feral cats. There’s nothing wrong with that and many kind-hearted people do it but it looks as though he went too far and began to annoy neighbours – a lot. This is not unusual.

“He feeds all the cats everywhere down here and we always used to say, ‘if you want to feed them, fine, feed them at your house’, but he comes all the way down here, puts pans out and all the neighbours weren’t too happy with him.”

Dennis Arnensten, who lives in the area and is a witness to the fact that it was the cat feeder who shot at the poliice officer

So, we know that the neighbours were unhappy with him and at 8:30 PM on June 4th (believed) he began to argue with one of them about feeding the cats. A neighbourhood dispute commenced and the police were called out.

Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey said that a deputy was sent out who was shot at by this agitated man who had been feeding cats. He seems that he lost his rag completely, went to his vehicle, grabbed a rifle and at that point the police officer realised what was going on and was then immediately shot at. The officer returned fire. The outcome: the police officer was hit several times but survived and is in hospital while the man was shot dead. The police officer is an ex-army guy and not long in the force.

The police officer told his boss that he had ‘won’ the gun battle. I am not sure anyone wins in those situations. Neighbour disputes are dangerous events for police officers as they can escalate. Tempers are frayed and irrational things can happen.

It’s a sad story because it is crazy to have a shoot out with the police over feral cats. Although I love cats including feral cats it is unwise to agitate neighbours by feeding them so overtly and in plain sight because a lot of neighbours don’t like it. I know an American woman who feeds feral cats in a discrete way to avoid conflict.

We know that many people feel that in feeding feral cats the person attracts other animals, ‘critters’ to the location which they believe spoils the area’s amenity. Also, a lot of people don’t like cats anyway and particularly feral cats. This guy lost his sense of reason. It seems to me that he became desperate and didn’t mind dying, to put it bluntly. He must have known that he was either going to die in a shoot out or end up in jail with a life sentence. He had, therefore, clearly lost his mind at that moment.

The shooting is the first time a Brevard County police officer has been seriously wounded in a shootout since August 2017, we are told on the Click Orlando.com website.

READ THE EARLIER STORY IF YOU’D LIKE TO.