Cat bin woman incident
2010 viral video and criminal case
On 21 August 2010, a woman was captured on CCTV dropping a cat into a wheelie bin on a residential street in Coventry, England. The cat was recovered alive from the bin 15 hours later by its owners. The footage went viral online and resulted in significant public backlash against the woman, dubbed as the Cat Bin Woman, who was later identified as Mary Bale and fined £250 for causing unnecessary suffering to an animal.
Incident
Stephanie Andrews-Mann and her husband Darryl Mann, who lived in Stoke Heath, Coventry, had installed a CCTV camera on the front of their house after their car had been damaged by careless drivers. On 21 August 2010, the camera recorded a woman approaching and petting their 4-year-old tabby cat Lola on the front wall of their property. The woman then grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck and dropped it into their wheelie bin, before closing the lid and walking away. The cat was discovered alive in the bin 15 hours later, after its owners heard the cat meowing, and the CCTV recording was found. Darryl Mann published the footage online with the intention of identifying the perpetrator, and the video quickly went viral online. The woman in the video was later identified as 45-year-old Mary Bale.
Reactions
The CCTV footage of the incident elicited strong reactions from the general public and was widely covered in both British and international media.
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