Coast firefighter sentenced for animal cruelty. ‘It’s not going to bring my cats back.’

A judge has accepted a guilty plea from a Pascagoula firefighter on two counts of animal cruelty.

David Andrew “Drew” Kuykendall entered the plea last week in Jackson County Justice Court.

Kuykendall was accused of luring two of his neighbor’s cats into a baited trap and then dumping the cats in the wild.

A judge decided Kuykendall must pay a $1,000 fine, plus court costs and $1,000 in restitution to his neighbor in Ocean Springs, Mindy Carroll. He also received a suspended six-month jail sentence, which will be dropped after one year of good behavior.

Two further counts of animal cruelty were dismissed, also subject to one year of good behavior.

Details in Coast animal cruelty case

Carroll had told the court she owned three rescue cats named Chuck, Irma and Will.

After her husband became ill, the adopted pets became his therapeutic companions.

Over the space of four days in November 2020, two of the cats, Chuck and Irma, went missing — and were never found, according to court records of Mindy Carroll’s complaint against Kuykendall.

One of Carroll’s neighbors soon told her she saw a cat trap in Kuykendall’s back yard, she wrote in court papers. The neighbor also had video footage of Kuykendall trapping the two missing cats and loading them into the back of his truck, she wrote.

When confronted, the court document said, Kuykendall initially denied involvement.

When Carroll sent one of the videos to Kuykendall in a text message, he responded, “Sorry. Thought it was a stray,” and said he had released it at the boat launch at the end of Beachview Drive in Ocean Springs, records show.

In a later phone conversation, Carroll said in her filing, Kuykendall offered to pay her $800.

Neither Kuykendall nor his attorney returned requests for comment.

What’s next after guilty plea

After the cats’ disappearance, Carroll’s mother, Sharon Garner, wrote to Pascagoula fire chief Hyler Krebs, informing him of his employee’s suspected involvement.

“Anyone that is that cruel especially to a neighbor does not deserve to even wear a badge,” Garner wrote.

Krebs replied to Garner in an email dated November 24, 2020, and included in court records that he had spoken to Kuykendall, who admitted to trapping and relocating the cats.

Krebs said he consulted Pascagoula Animal Control and “was informed that as long as an animal is on a person’s property and it does not have a tag or leash it is considered a stray and moving a stray from one area to another does not constitute a crime.”

Krebs also wrote that he “encouraged Mr. Kuykendall to take any trapped animals to the shelter in the future.”

Krebs and Pascagoula the fire department did not return requests for comment or say whether there would be any disciplinary action against Kuykendall following his guilty plea.

Closure for MS cat owner

After the court proceedings on Thursday morning, standing outside the courthouse, Mindy Carroll told the Sun Herald this was the first time she had actually seen Kuykendall.

The firefighter apologized to Carroll in the courtroom.

Though glad to see an end to the legal process that brought her here, Carroll, who never found her two abducted cats, found little solace in the admission of guilt.

“It’s not going to bring my cats back,” said Carroll, with tears in her eyes.

Carroll said the cats “weren’t just yard cats, they were part of our family.”

Carroll said she’s adopted a new cat since Chuck and Irma’ left them.