A killed kitten sparks a trial by social media

Stephanie Cassar was at her Golden Bay restaurant on Sunday evening when she heard that a man had killed a kitten just outside.
"I went round and saw a group of people standing there," she told the Times of Malta.
"There was a dead cat on the ground. It was one of the kittens I feed every morning. Horrible."
By the next morning, news of the incident was plastered all over Facebook '" and many were pinning the blame on Ms Cassar, her elderly mother and their family business.
"Hateful messages poured in nonstop. People saying they were going to boycott us, others calling us demel [trash] or saying the kitten's fate should have been ours. I can't repeat some of the things people have told me... I'm honestly frightened," she said.
It got so hard to keep up with all the vitriol, that Ms Cassar?did the unthinkable for a 21st century business: she took the restaurant's Facebook page offline, and its phones off the hook.
"It just got too much," she said, her voice crackling under the strain. "We couldn't cope."?
By Tuesday afternoon, Ms Cassar had hired a lawyer and filed a police report alleging online harassment.?
Rage was sparked by a Facebook post uploaded by a patron who had been at...

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