Man killed his dog, Court told

Press, 31 August 1977, Page 12

Man killed his dog, Court told

PA Wellington A man slit his dog’s I throat, cut its liver out, then rang the police to say somebody else had done it, the | Magistrate’s Court in Weli lington heard. The man, whose name was supressed, was convicted bv jMr J. A. Wicks, S.M., of making a verbal and untrue statement to the police that an act of aggravated cruelty | to a dog had been committed. He was fined SlOO but a charge of aggravated cruelty was dismissed. He said the defendant had told a constable that his dog had been killed and cut up between 1 a.m.. when he bad checked it, and 1.30 a.m. The' dog was in the back yard of the house about a metre from its kennel. Its throat had been cut, and its belly slit three-quar-ters of the length of its body. The liver was in the kennel. The defendant later had admitted that he had killed the dog himself, after it had made a mess on his bed and on the floor. After he had rubbed its nose in the mess, and spanked it, something had “snapped” inside him, the Magistrate said. He had taken a curvedblade boning knife, had; taken the dog outside and slit its throat. He claimed he had then “gone berserk” and sliced] open the dog’s stomach. He then telephoned the police, not knowing Wijat Lu uu.