On July 30, in the British seaside city of Brighton, a former security guard was sentenced to more than five years in prison for stabbing nine cats to death in a nighttime attack.

According to the Associated Press, 54-year-old Steve Vallow was found guilty of attacking 16 cats in Brighton, 80 kilometers south of London, from the end of 2018 to mid-2019, resulting in the death of nine.

The owner of one of the dead cats was arrested by police after he installed a surveillance camera. During that attack, some cat owners found their pets bleeding on their doorsteps.

But prosecutors said they found a photo of a dead cat on his phone and a search of his home found a knife with cat blood and Steve's DNA.

After a trial, he was found guilty of possessing a knife in public and 16 counts of criminal damage related to cats, which carries a higher penalty than animal cruelty.

At Hove Crown Court on Friday, a number of cat owners watched as Steve was jailed for five years and three months. Judge Jeremy Gold said Steve's behavior was cruel and persistent and struck at the heart of family life.

Jayne Joffe, senior prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: "No one can understand what drove Steve to do this to the family pets.

"This is a tragedy for all the owners involved. Steve not only inflicted horrific pain on every animal he attacked, but also caused real trauma to their owners, many of whom found their beloved pets injured and bleeding. "