Former Parker County animal shelter employee gets 40 years for torturing, killing kittens
A former employee of the Weatherford Parker County Animal Shelter, who pleaded guilty to charges of torturing and killing kittens, has been sentenced to 40 years in prison, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Gabriel Skyler Caswell, 23, was sentenced by a jury and a judge in three trials on related animal cruelty charges before pleading guilty in the remaining 12 cases, prosecutors with the Parker County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
Caswell was caught abusing a kitten at the animal shelter in 2023 after workers there had observed an increase in feline deaths, a former shelter director testified in court.
Caswell was recorded on surveillance footage stomping on the animals, kicking them and throwing them across the room, officials said. He was charged with torturing 15 kittens, several of which died, prosecutors said.
In a statement to police, Caswell said he was taking anger out on the kittens because he had an infant that would not sleep, and he could not access pornography to which he was addicted.
Caswell was sentenced to 30 years in prison in the first three cases — with 10-year sentences stacked on top of each other — and 10 years on the remaining 12 counts, making his total sentence 40 years, officials said.
“In my nearly 30 years as a prosecutor, I have seen some horrific things. However, I have never actually witnessed on video this particular kind of cruelty,” Parker County District Attorney Jeff Swain said. “To stare into the eyes of an innocent kitten while you literally snuff the life out of them like this defendant did takes a really sick and twisted person.”
Some of the videos showed Caswell throwing dead kittens into a trash can.
“Both men and women on the juries were crying,” Assistant District Attorney Ryan Whyte said. “We never did get done playing all of the clips of the 15 kittens he was caught torturing because we just couldn’t subject our jurors to anymore.”
This story was originally published March 18, 2025 at 6:57 PM.
