American Society for the Prevention

of Cruelty to Animals

In the city’s first cruelty case in which an animal’s DNA was used to win a conviction, a 20-year-old Brooklyn man was sentenced Wednesday to two to six years in prison for an attack in which a cat was doused with lighter fluid and set on fire in an empty apartment.

The man, Angelo Monderoy, who prosecutors said burned the cat because he was bored, also faces possible deportation to his native Trinidad, the authorities said.

In October 2008, Scruffy, a 1-year-old tabby also known as Tommy Two Times, was found by a building superintendent in Crown Heights with much of his fur and skin burned off. He was euthanized soon after.

Investigators from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals found burned animal tissue stuck to the floor in a vacant room in the super’s building and sent it off to a lab along with a sample from Scruffy’s body. It came back a match.

Meanwhile, Mr. Monderoy, then 18, and another teenager, Matthew Cooper, told the authorities they had taken a cat to the same apartment, where one stepped on him and the other doused him with lighter fluid. Prosecutors said the DNA match strengthened their case by allowing them to link Scruffy, whose injuries were documented in painful detail, to the attack in the apartment.

Mr. Cooper pleaded guilty — he received seven years for a package of crimes including an assault on a man — but Mr. Monderoy opted for trial and was convicted of aggravated cruelty to animals, arson and burglary in March of this year and faced a maximum of 15 years in prison.

At Wednesday’s sentencing, the judge, Michael A. Gary of State Supreme Court, noted that the attack, far from being spontaneous and impulsive, took some planning, and that Mr. Monderoy had plenty of opportunities to stop, the A.S.P.C.A. said. “The world should know,” Justice Gary said, what Mr. Monderoy had done.