May 2026 – Joshua Taylor (39) has pled guilty in Erie County Court to one court of attempted aggravated cruelty to animals for killing two kittens in January of 2024.. Responding to a welfare check, police officers found two cats inside an apartment and three kittens inside a pillowcase buried in the snow on the balcony.  Taylor was found nearby in a parking lot. The kittens were taken to the Orchard Park Veterinary Medical Center, where a veterinarian found two of the kittens were dead and one kitten was in critical condition inside a zipped bag within a pillowcase. The two kittens were sent to Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and a necropsy determined that the kittens died from asphyxiation and/or hypothermia. The other kitten was suffering from hypothermia and/or asphyxiation upon arrival, but has since recovered and was adopted by the veterinarian. Taylor was sentenced to a conditional discharge, and the judge issued a three-year “no animal order.”