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Melbourne, Australia. An Australian man has been charged with aggravated animal cruelty after ripping the head off a kitten and tossing it down the street as children watched, a report said on Wednesday.

Police received several calls from onlookers when the 41-year-old threatened to kill the animal as part of an ongoing dispute with a neighbor, the Melbourne Herald Sun said.

As they headed to the scene in Bendigo, some 150 kilometers northwest of Melbourne, police allege the man grabbed the kitten belonging to his neighbor and tore off its head with his bare hands.

He then threw it down the street in front of shocked onlookers, including children playing nearby, the report said.

“It’s a terrible thing to witness,” Senior Constable Danny Wolters said.

“We’d seen the kitten on the road that had its head ripped off.”

A witness quoted by the newspaper said the man had threatened to harm the children that lived in the house of his neighbor.

“Because he couldn’t do that, he grabbed their kitten and just wrung its neck and did it to the point where he’d actually pulled the cat’s head right off and threw the cat’s head on the road,” the witness claimed.

The man was charged with drunkenness, aggravated animal cruelty, criminal damage and threats to kill and was bailed to appear in court on March 23.

Agence France-Presse