A pet owner who adopted one of the 15 surviving animals that were thrown from a high-rise building in Hong Kong earlier this year filed a court challenge on Monday, over the Department of Justice’s decision to not prosecute the alleged perpetrators.

The judicial review application stemmed from the Feb. 14 incident where 30 pet animals were found to have been apparently thrown from a housing estate building in Sham Tseng. Fifteen animals died, including a cat, several chinchillas, a guinea pig and two rabbits. The applicant Pang Lok-sze later adopted a surviving British Shorthair cat and named it Potter.

The Department of Justice had announced on Sept. 2 that it would not prosecute the two men alleged to have committed the crime, months after the police investigation, citing insufficient evidence.

Pang said in her application that the justice department failed to communicate its decision to an interested party or member of the public, and accused it of making an “unlawful” and “unreasonable” decision that “failed to take account of a plainly relevant prospect of conviction” without providing an explanation.

“Notwithstanding the DoJ’s decision to not prosecute the two perpetrators, Ms. Pang and her boyfriend continued to harbor a motivation to secure a form of justice for not only their cat Potter, but for the animals who were killed, abused and those who will continue to be abused, should the matter be left as it is,” said Pang’s attorney Kim Joseph McCoy.

The applicant added that as local laws still regarded pet animals as the owner’s property, it failed to properly reflect the physiological and emotional characteristics of animals, which set them apart from inanimate objects.

As the time limit for prosecution under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Ordinance is six months, Pang also argued that the DoJ’s decision prevented others from initiating a private prosecution, which violated prosecution rules and the public’s expectations.

She also urged the government to lift the six-month time limit for such cases.

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