WOONSOCKET, R.I. (AP) – A 15-year-old boy has been charged after he and his 9-year-old brother allegedly threw a cat out of a window, killing it.

Police arrested the teenager last week and charged him with malicious injury to or killing of animals.

Neighbors told police they saw the boys outside “laughing and screaming and taking turns throwing (the cat) to the ground,” The Providence Journal reported on Sunday.

Another witness said she saw the boys throw the cat from a second-story window.

When police arrived at the house, they said they found a dead cat in the backyard of an adjacent building.

Police have not identified the boys because they are minors.

The assistant director to the Rhode Island Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Dave Holden, said his sympathies weren’t only with the cat or the boys, “it’s for everyone involved. They have to be responsible for what they did.”

He said he’s glad Woonsocket police were taking the case seriously.