Conway community members concerned after series of shootings that left cats dead or injured
CONWAY, Ark.- A troubling trend has emerged in Conway, prompting concern from local animal advocates and residents alike.
The Conway Animal Services, alongside the Community Cats Support Network, are investigating a series of shootings that have left multiple cats dead or severely injured, leading some to label the perpetrator as a 'cat serial killer.'
'We have cats in a general location that are getting hurt—they are getting shot,' Lisa Kowalski, a volunteer with the Community Cats Support Network, said.
Dog-fighting ring in Arkansas busted; Shelter director bitten
The organization has observed a disturbing pattern of violence against cats since late November to early December of last year.
Veterinary examinations have confirmed that many of the injured cats have been struck by pellet guns.
Kowalski expressed her dismay at the ongoing cruelty, noting, 'This isn't just an isolated incident but the actions of repeated cruelty,' recounting instances where one cat was shot twice.
Among the victims are both beloved pets and community cats, many of which had been spayed or neutered and returned to their territories as part of a Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) initiative designed to manage the local cat population humanely.
Bryant Animal Control director speaks on recent case of animal cruelty that left a cat dead
To combat this wave of cruelty, the Community Cats Support Network is actively searching for leads by canvassing neighborhoods, reviewing video footage and encouraging residents to report any suspicious activity.
The severity of this issue is underscored by the challenge of prosecuting animal cruelty cases in Arkansas, where legal action often hinges on obtaining clear video evidence of the acts.
In response, Kowalski has launched a fundraiser aimed at helping.
'We are trying to get donations for solar-powered cameras so that we could put them up and then we would be able to catch the person in the act and then be able to prosecute them,' Kowalski explained.
West Memphis priest suspended by church after allegations of drowning cats
Community members who wish to support the cause can visit the organization's website, and those with any information regarding the shootings are encouraged to report it anonymously to the Conway Animal Services by calling 501-450-6160.
The Conway community is urged to remains on high alert, hoping that increased awareness and vigilance will prevent further harm to their feline friends.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Yahoo
Let's Start Talking About Jail Time for Trump and His MAGA Enablers
What's in the water in the state of Maryland? Whatever it is, it's certainly more invigorating than the sewage that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his grandchildren have been swimming in. A few weeks ago, one of the Old Line State's senators, Chris Van Hollen, dropped his gloves to take on President Donald Trump's unlawful banishment and imprisonment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. This week, his House colleague Kweisi Mfume was responding to an administration flirting with suspending the habeas rights of its citizens in stark, but welcome terms. 'It's a damn shame to continue to see what is happening to our nation under the guise of this Trump administration and his Department of Government Evil,' he said. 'He and Elon Musk, really in my opinion, deserve to be arrested and charged with assault on the Constitution.' One of the more unfortunate realities of the Trump era is that to speak the plain truth about it requires you to get over the feeling that you're being shrill or alarmist. 'I know that might sound crazy and ludicrous,' Mfume said, commenting on his call to arrest the president and his pet oligarch. As someone who's spent the past few years issuing Cassandra-like warnings only to watch so many of my ostensible industry peers take a dive, I can relate. But the thing about Cassandra is that she's correct, and so is Mfume. Trump isn't a president. He's the head of a criminal syndicate, and he should be treated accordingly—now and, even more importantly, when he and his accomplices are finally out of power. Trump 2.0 has been a remarkable speedrun into lawlessness, a testament to the fact that there might have actually been some adults in the room during his first term. (During which time he still fomented an insurrection and got impeached twice!) Now, freed from those guardrails that were once upstanding, he's rocketed into a new level of infamy. I once held that George W. Bush's reign was much more costly than Trump's. No longer; his return has truly been a thing apart. As TNR's Alex Shephard documented this week, Trump's trip to the Gulf States has been a vertically integrated grift, in which the president has racked up more corrupt enterprises than most politicians manage in their whole careers. This week's skullduggery is, of course, just one brief crime spree among many. Over at The Nation, Jeb Lund lays down the lengthy rap sheet that Trump has written for himself in his first 100 days. The Trump administration has heisted the private data of millions of Americans, unlawfully terminated thousands of federal employees, extorted law firms and businesses and broadcasters; they're gaming the markets, raking in corrupt money with crypto-tokens, kidnapping people and exiling them to foreign prisons without due process, and much much more. As Lund notes: 'The question is not whether Trump and his people committed a crime while you read that last sentence but how many.' It shouldn't come as any surprise that the Trump administration is canceling the FBI's investigations into white-collar criminals. But if these sorts of crimes aren't dramatic enough for you, we could also simply stick with good old-fashioned manslaughter. As TNR's Matt Ford reported this week, one of the hallmarks of Trump's public health policies is that they will kill a lot of children—probably not a surprise given that the aforementioned Kennedy is well known for directing officials in Samoa to run an open-air eugenics experiment that killed 83 kids. 'The net effect of these policy changes,' Ford writes, 'is to make this country a more dangerous place for Americans to give birth and grow up.' Abroad, Trump administration policies have the same eugenicist bent. As TNR contributor James North chronicled, the gutting of PEPFAR—the Bush-era HIV/AIDS intervention that has saved countless lives in Africa and one of the most highly regarded U.S. policies the world over—'has already sentenced tens of thousands of people in Africa to death, and with each week that passes with the program stuck in limbo, many thousands of needless deaths will follow.' The administration's approach to PEPFAR is of a piece with a range of policy decisions that will, in the best-case scenario, cede soft-power space to China and others to secure the developing world's regard for stepping into a vacuum and providing humanitarian assistance. The worst-case scenario is, naturally, millions of needless deaths. Back in March, The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof attempted to quantify the harms done by the Trump administration's decimation of foreign aid agencies in terms of lives lost. Here are his calculations: 1.65 million deaths from AIDS, 500,000 from lack of vaccines, 550,000 from lack of food aid, and approximately 300,000 each from lack of malaria and tuberculosis prevention, respectively. This all raises an interesting question: How many people have to die before the word holocaust is in play? I'm not gunning for shock value here, at least not solely. I want to suggest that there is a certain necessary logic to what has to follow corrupt misrule of this kind: tribunals, trials, punishment, prison, and the running to ground and defunding of the entire Trump syndicate. It's an undertaking that will require no small amount of courage, and it will break with a long-standing status quo that has favored the absolution of numerous mortal sins, from the Bush administration's unlawful torture network to Wall Street's ruination of the economy to the many costly foreign misadventures that have feathered the nests of the military industrial complex over the years. The 'look forward, not backward' ways etched into the civic firmament have served us poorly; in retrospect, what we had to look forward to was this exact moment with this perfidious administration. Real accountability is not something I expect will be popular with the rotted mass media and its grotesque aversion to good governance or the wholly out-of-touch pundit class, whose opinions on Trumpian corruption tend to lag years behind most functional adults'. This is where the avatars of 'Let the bad guys off the hook and move on' obtained their intellectual cover over the years. Suffice it to say, they'll like a better world wrought from taking these criminals down and locking them up just fine. But those who want to pursue justice for all those wronged by this administration should expect to be branded as heretical. We hear so much about the 'rule of law' these days. So many people are concerned about it! They just don't know what's going to happen to it. Even among the gravely worried, there is this sense that the 'rule of law' is like a machine someone turned on at some point in the past, which runs in the background of American life like some sort of ambient presence. What the rule of law really is, it turns out, is the sum total of our deeds—and our inaction. The rule of law lives or dies on our willingness to act—occasionally with grim resolve. It's time for people who value justice to screw their courage to the sticking place. This article first appeared in Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins. Sign up here.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Yahoo
4 men from WNY arrested for child porn in nationwide crackdown
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — Four men from Western New York, ranging in ages 20 to 68, were arrested and charged with possession of child pornography during a nationwide crackdown led by the FBI, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Over the course of five days, Operation Restore Justice led to the arrests of 205 child sexual abuse offenders nationwide, officials said. The four men arrested were identified as Samari Thompson, 20, of Buffalo, Jamie Anderson, 25, of Buffalo, Matthew Kowalski, 25, of Kenmore, and Brian Keith, 68, of Niagara Falls. Over 60 images and videos of suspected child pornography were allegedly found on a cellphone at Thompson's residence, including images and videos depicting infants. Officials said Anderson and Kowalski were each sentenced to 10 years of probation for possessing a sexual performance of a minor in 2022 and 2024, respectively. Apparent child pornography was allegedly uploaded to a Kik account traced back to Anderson. Images of suspected child pornography were allegedly found in Kowalski's possession during an unannounced home visit last month. Keith was found to be in possession of child pornography on multiple devices in March and is a registered Level 3 sex offender, according to the attorney's office. The Justice Department encourages the public to report suspected child exploitation through the FBI's tipline at 1-800-CALL-FBI (225-5324), or by calling a local FBI field office. Latest Local News Kayleigh Hunter-Gasperini joined the News 4 team in 2024 as a Digital Video Producer. She is a graduate of Chatham University. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to News 4 Buffalo.
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Yahoo
Ohio's HB 6 utility scandal gets true-crime treatment in HBO film
One of the largest utility scandals in U.S. history has remained largely unknown outside Ohio — until now. Last week, HBO released a documentary that covers the long, sordid saga, which led to the federal criminal convictions of a former speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives and a former head of the Ohio Republican Party. 'The Dark Money Game: Ohio Confidential' follows the story of how utility companies used roughly $60 million in bribes to public officials to secure more than $1.5 billion in ratepayer subsidies for aging, uneconomical coal and nuclear plants. Canary Media contributing reporter Kathiann Kowalski has spent more than a decade covering the House Bill 6 saga and Ohio utilities' other efforts to get ratepayer-funded bailouts. Dan Haugen, a senior editor at Canary Media, recently spoke with Kowalski about her reactions to the new film. The following transcript has been edited slightly for length and clarity. Haugen: So, you watched this new HBO documentary "Ohio Confidential" the other day. What about it is still on your mind today? Kowalski: I was struck by the focus they used of how dark money and gerrymandering undermined voters' will in the wake of a 2010 Supreme Court case that opened the door for unlimited corporate spending on political campaigns, subject to few conditions. Haugen: Was there any factual information that wasn't previously reported by you or others? Kowalski: A lot of it was very familiar, given the fact that I had read through most of the exhibits, read Neil Clark's book, gone to part of the trial, and been following this for years. There was an interesting scene where they were able to get footage of the FBI observing a private detective that former Ohio GOP Chair Matt Borges and company had apparently retained to follow Tyler Fehrman, who was a witness in the federal criminal case. Haugen: Did the film change your understanding of the HB 6 story in any way? Kowalski: They did a decent job connecting some dots. I had not thought through how former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder's actions also enabled a far-right coalition in the Legislature to push through an anti-abortion law in 2019. It gave me a broader perspective on the anti-democracy angle of the public corruption, but my understanding of the basic story did not change. Haugen: Where did the abortion legislation appear on the timeline? Kowalski: The way that the filmmaker presents it is that once Householder helped these people get the anti-abortion legislation passed, he then had people who felt they owed him something. I looked at the timing, and Gov. Mike DeWine signed the anti-abortion legislation the day before House Bill 6 was introduced. Haugen: One of the biggest unknowns still today is what, if any, role the governor's office had in all this. You and others have reported on a December 2018 dinner with FirstEnergy executives, DeWine, and Jon Husted, just weeks before the latter two took office as governor and lieutenant governor. Neither has been charged nor accused of any wrongdoing. Does the film shed any new light on their connections? Kowalski: The filmmakers include an allegation of $5 million going from FirstEnergy to help elect DeWine. And they note a disclaimer from DeWine's office that it was all within the confines of what was allowed under the law. That's basically about all they did. It was not a deep dive into the governor's actions or Husted, who was recently appointed to fill Vice President JD Vance's U.S. Senate seat. I think maybe they wanted to keep their story tightly focused on the Legislature and what has been proven in the first federal criminal case. That also avoids having to include more disclaimers about how nothing's been proven against others, everybody denies wrongdoing, etc., etc. Haugen: Did anything in this film make you smile or laugh? Kowalski: A couple things. First, it starts off with actor Michael Imperioli reading an excerpt from lobbyist Neil Clark's tell-all book, which was published after Clark, who had been criminally charged for his role in the HB 6 scandal, died by suicide in 2021. The fact that Imperioli is famous for roles in Goodfellas and The Sopranos just struck me as a wonderful bit of filmmaking irony. There were also some scenes about whistleblower Tyler Fehrman meeting with the FBI or Matt Borges. The locations included Graeter's Ice Cream and a Starbucks, and so the film has scenes of people working in those places. It made me think, well, gee, if you had included Dewine and Husted's dinner with the FirstEnergy executives, you could have shown the inside of the Athletic Club of Columbus or its menu or storefront or something. Haugen: So is this something you would recommend that your readers watch? Kowalski: Yes. It's compelling storytelling. It does a good job of explaining things in plain terms. There's a limited cast of characters, and you can follow the story. If House Bill 6 is new to you, it's definitely worth watching. And it's certainly important now as we're looking at not only the continued use of dark money in politics through either nonprofits or limited liability corporations, but also, with technology, likely more ways to cover up potential bribes. So, yes, people should be aware of this. The Dark Money Game: Ohio Confidential is streaming now on MAX. For occasional HB 6 updates from Kathiann Kowalski, subscribe to our Ohio Utility Watch newsletter.
