NORTH HAVEN — A tiny kitten only weeks old was thrown from a car into oncoming traffic on I-91 Friday afternoon, prompting several motorists to pull over on the busy highway to try to save his life.

The kitten, named Lieutenant Dan by his rescuers after the character in the movie “Forrest Gump,” was able to make it to the barriers on the left side of the highway without being hit, but was ultimately euthanized because of the extent of his injuries from hitting the pavement.

The incident happened at about 3:45 p.m. Friday between exits 8 and 9 northbound on the New Haven/North Haven line. The car, thought to be a black sedan-type car, slowed down and tossed the kitten into the road, and then took off, according to witnesses.

“I saw a kitten hit the road,” said West Haven resident Shaina Boci, who was right behind the car. “There were three black cars ahead of me and I don’t know which one it came out of. I called 911 immediately to let them know and they asked if I had gotten the license plate, which I hadn’t because I didn’t know which car it was.”

She tried to follow the car but it was immediately out of sight, she said, so she got off the highway and got back on to go back the scene and try to find the kitten. “Hopefully it hadn’t been hit,” she said. “I pulled into the fast lane and put my hazard lights on and I saw the kitten up against the barrier, so I pulled over into the barrier.

At that point another car pulled up behind her, Boci said. When she got out to grab the kitten, he ran right to the other car so the driver of that car was able to scoop him up and put him in his car. “In hindsight it was really scary,” he said. I’m glad that we caught him but it could have ended very differently.”

The man in the other car asked her if it was her kitten, Boci said, and when she told him it had been thrown onto the highway, he said he would take it to a veterinarian. But in the confusion, she didn’t get his contact information, Boci said, so she called veterinary hospitals and animal rescues trying to find out what happened to the kitten. But someone shared the story to her Facebook page, she said, so she was able to learn his fate.

New Haven resident Jackie Nuzzo said the man in the car is a close family friend. “He saw the guy pull over and throw the cat into the highway,” she said. "He said everyone was stopping and pulling over. It was like a 10-car pile-up and they were all pulled over. They all tried to catch the cat and rescue him.”

The cat was terrified when he got into the car, Nuzzo said. “He did not get hit by a car, which is why we thought maybe he was just traumatized,” she said. “When they put him in the car, he hid under the steering wheel and they had to climb under the car and reach into the steering wheel cavity to get him out. They put him in a crate and he was hissing — obviously I know why now, but he wouldn’t let anyone get near him.”

She called her aunt Eileen Aiello, who immediately said she wanted the kitten. “I didn’t want them to give him away to a stranger,” Nuzzo said, because she knew that often kittens are used for dog bait. “I don’t trust anybody so I wanted to find him a home with somebody I know he will be safe with. My aunt is an animal lover so I called her and she said to me, ‘I want him — bring him to me right now.’”

By the end of the night, Lt. Dan was sitting on Aiello’s lap and was drinking, Nuzzo said. But when he got up to go into his crate, her aunt knew something was wrong, Nuzzo said, so she brought him to Central Hospital for Veterinary Medicine on Devine Street, which is an emergency veterinary hospital.

“They said he has two broken legs and they think he had internal bleeding,” she said. “He had urine in his stomach, which they think was because his bladder was torn, there was paralysis, there was so many things wrong. My aunt said that money wasn’t a factor and that if they could save him she wanted them to save him.

“The vet said they can do what we need to do — whatever we tell them to do they are going to do — but it doesn’t matter; he will go through all this pain and agony and the end result is going to be the same,” she said. “They told us, ‘you’re already behind the eight ball.’” So they ultimately made the decision to euthanize him, she said, a decision which left both her and her aunt in tears.

“They need to be caught,” she said of the person who threw the kitten into the highway. “I’m very concerned that they have other animals or they would do it again to somebody else. What if this was someone else’s kitten that they broke into a home and took him?. We don’t know anything about this kitten or where the other kittens from the liter are. This kitten was barely 8 weeks old. They depend on you and they don’t know what’s going on; how could you do this to him?”

She was told that the police didn’t respond after the 911 call was made until after everyone had left, Nuzzo said, but she is hoping they will pursue the case.

“There are cameras on the highway, so we are hoping if we push this long enough and hard enough, that they will look into the cameras and see if they caught something,” she said.

A dispatcher at Troop I in Bethany, which oversees the New Haven area, said officers didn’t find anything at the scene. The highway cameras are operated by the Department of Transportation, she said, not the State Police. A DOT representative couldn’t be reached for comment Sunday.

“It was definitely pretty traumatic,” Boci said. “Afterwards I was able to calm down and realize what had actually happened. It was really tough."

“Thank God that they caught him because if he had run away, he would have died slowly and scared,” Nuzzo said. “At least at the end he knew he was loved, he was letting my aunt hold him, he was sitting in her lap. He was safe and he knew it.”

———

©2016 the New Haven Register (New Haven, Conn.)

Visit the New Haven Register (New Haven, Conn.) at www.nhregister.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.