'Joking' teen arrested for throwing kitten into water in 'disturbing' viral video

Garratt Haile, 18, was arrested after a video allegedly showed him chucking a kitten into a body of water. (Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department)

A California teenage boy was arrested Friday after he was caught on video chucking a kitten into a “large body of water” while joking and laughing about abusing the animal, police said.

WARNING: FOOTAGE MAY BE DISTURBING TO SOME VIEWERS

Garratt Haile, 18, of Patterson, Calif., was arrested after several people identified him as the person seen in the disturbing video recently posted on a private Facebook page, the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department said.

Haile, who was 17 when the video was shot, is said to be the person seen holding the cat by its scruff and saying “And this is Felipe the flying cat” before hurling the animal into the water. It’s unclear where the video was shot.

It’s also unclear if the kitten survived.

“Who knows where the kitten is right now, if it’s alive or not. I don’t know but I hope it is,” Nicole Pinheiro, who shared the video to increase public awareness, told FOX40 Sacramento.

Though the video was shot about a year ago, it was only recently shared on social media, where it was viewed countless times.

"My heart, it just left my body," Pinheiro said. "And I showed my mom and she burst into tears. She was like, 'I can't believe that this is the world now.'"

Police said the number of people who contacted authorities with information helped them nab Haile.

Haile was arrested at about 8 a.m. Friday and booked into Stanislaus County Jail on a felony animal cruelty charge. Authorities are still investigating the video to try to identify the other people involved.

"At 17, I still knew what I was doing. He knew what he was doing," Pinheiro said, adding Haile should face charges as an adult, not a minor. "Even if he was just joking around, or just trying to put something on Snapchat, or whatever he was doing, it's wrong regardless. Regardless of if it's a year old or today, he still did it."