“We’re driving down First Street and Country Club right now and a lady is throwing kittens out of her vehicle.”

It was an unusual 911 call, and the couple who made it is still in shock, though the woman they identified as throwing young kittens out of her car window and running them over Wednesday afternoon has been taken into custody. New Bern police have not announced any charges against the woman and have not released her name as the investigation is continuing.

Chris Orris and his wife Lacey, who works as a paramedic in Cove City, were driving past Oak Drive on Country Club Drive at 4:20 p.m. Wednesday when they were startled by the sight of a young kitten rolling out from under a moving car.

The kitten, which they estimate to be about four weeks old, was still moving and they started to slow down to see if they could help it when, according to Lacey, “We saw her drop a second kitten and ran it over immediately … It just plopped out her window,” she said. “She didn’t brake, she didn’t slow down.”

The woman was driving, Chris Orris estimated, between 35 and 40 mph.

“No care in the world that she was running them over while she was driving,” he said.

The Orrises were stunned and followed the car to where it stopped at a traffic light on the U.S. 70 overpass.

Chris got out of the car to confront the driver while Lacey took cell phone photos of her license plate. Chris said he was shocked when he got to the car.

“She had a young boy in the passenger seat and he looked really upset,” he said.

He said he told the woman he was going to call the police. As the light changed, she drove away.

The couple called 911 and followed the car another block or so before turning around to check on the cats dropped from the car. When they got to the spot where they had seen the first kitten thrown out, police were already gathering.

“One was where the dead kitten was and he relocated the kitten to the side of the road,” Chris said.

A female officer was cradling the injured kitten. “She had blood all over her,” Lacey said. The kitten was crying loudly. “We got a towel so she could wrap the kitten. His breathing was so ragged and his face was a bloody mess.”

The police remained while they waited for an animal control officer to arrive on the scene.

The officer, she said, didn’t think the kitten had much chance. “We don’t have very high hopes,” Lacey said. “Just the way it was looking. I’ve been in EMS long enough to know it wasn’t looking good.”

A third dead kitten was also found, apparently thrown before the Orrises had first come on the scene.

Police tracked down the woman, and Chris was called to verify her identity.

“What really upset me,” he said, “is when the police drove me by to identify her, she was crying in her front yard because she had been caught. There were no tears when she had been throwing those kittens out of the car.”

Police had the woman standing in front of her house, he said, and “there were kids walking around the neighborhood with kittens in their arms.”

A police spokesman said information on the case would not be released until Friday, although he noted receiving numerous inquiries about the case.

Chris and Lacey both put the incident up on Facebook and Chris said “we were shocked at the response.”

"I hope the police and prosecutors and judges take this seriously to show that, in New Bern, we treat our animals with compassion and concern. I had a really rough time sleeping last night,” he said the day after the incident. “The one thing we all love to watch is cute kittens on the internet. The last thing you expect to see is a normal person throwing kittens out of her window.”

Contact Bill Hand at bill.hand@newbernsj.com, 252-635-5677, and follow him @BillHandNBSJ.