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SARATOGA SPRINGS — Police have arrested a Saratoga Springs man suspected of violently attacking his friend's house cat.

The cat's owner, who suspected her pet was being deliberately injured, told police she set up a "nanny cam" to keep an eye on things. Last week she watched as her son's friend, Jordan Lindquist, 19, allegedly attacked the cat.

Investigators called the attack "torture" in a police affidavit.

Lindquist had been staying with the family. According to police, the video showed Lindquist going into his friend's bedroom and closing the curtains before fishing the cat out from under a bed. As the cat hissed and fought, Lindquist allegedly threw it down onto the bed and then held it down while he punched it in the head "with extreme force," the affidavit states.

After hitting the cat several times, Lindquist picked it up and shook it violently, then appeared to slam it several times on the floor just out of view of the camera, police said.

"Officers watching the video believed if the cat had been a baby, it would probably have been killed because of the viciousness and violence of the shaking and from the punches to the head it sustained," the affidavit states.

The cat's owner, who was watching the attack on the camera, had her son call his friend to tell him to stop hurting the cat. She watched as Lindquist answered the phone "as if nothing had happened," then began shouting and searching for the camera when he realized he was being watched.

Lindquist was arrested Friday and booked into Utah County Jail for investigation of animal cruelty. He was released Sunday after posting $5,000 bail. A search of state court records revealed no significant criminal history as an adult.



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