A Long Beach man is scheduled to be arraigned today for allegedly strangling his girlfriend's cat.
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Sergei Smirnoff, 23, was arrested on suspicion of animal cruelty by Redondo Beach police officers and held on $20,000 bail.
Smirnoff had apparently planned to give the cat to his unidentified girlfriend as a Christmas present, but the couple had a falling out before the holiday, police said.
Witnesses say they saw Smirnoff strangling the cat in a fit of rage n the garage of the girlfriend's apartment in the 2300 block of Carnegie Lane, Redondo Beach, where cops later found the cat dead, police said.
The woman did not know what happened until officers arrived, police added. Her boyfriend's court hearing is in Torrance.
So I guess someone will be looking for a New Year's date.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.