Woman sentenced to county jail for assaulting kitten 'as hard as she could'

WARREN

A woman was sentenced Friday to 45 days in the Trumbull County jail and placed on five years probation for slamming a kitten into a dresser, then violently throwing it against a window “as hard as she could.”

Jessica Scharba, 27, of Fifth Street Southwest, Parkman Road Northwest and North State Line Road in Masury, pleaded no contest Friday in Warren Municipal Court to misdemeanor cruelty to animals and disorderly conduct.

The cruelty to animals stemmed from a 911 call to Scharba’s Fifth Street address Jan. 12. She told police her ex-boyfriend choked her, but there was no evidence she was assaulted, and the ex-boyfriend produced a video showing Scharba assaulting the kitten.

The video showed Scharba blocking the man’s exit from the apartment by standing in front of him and swinging her fist at him.

It then shows Scharba grabbing the kitten by the neck and then screaming she’ll do anything to keep him from leaving the house, police said.

“At which time she slammed the kitten’s head on the dresser several times that was in the living room,” the police report said.

“The video then shows Jessica violently throwing the kitten against the window as hard as she could, causing the baby kitten to fall behind the dresser,” police said in a report.

The kitten was not seriously injured, and she told authorities the ex-boyfriend took care of the kitten after that, said Nick Graham, assistant Warren law director.

Following a court-ordered evaluation, Scharba received an unspecified type of treatment and will continue to receive treatment in jail and afterwards, Graham said.

The disorderly conduct charge stemmed from a separate incident May 24 at a residence in the 800 block of Parkman Road Northwest in which Scharba threw a porcelain salt shaker near her female roommate, police said. No one was injured.