SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - A man was convicted Tuesday of tossing a little dog to its death on a busy highway in a bout of road rage and could get up to three years in prison.
A jury took less than an hour to convict Andrew Burnett, 27, of San Jose, of animal cruelty for killing Leo, a fluffy white bichon frise, in an episode that outraged dog lovers. Dog lovers and others had donated $120,000 to find Leo’s killer - more than the reward in many local missing-child cases. Moderator’s Notes: I’ve deleted the majority of this post since it was copyrighted material.**
That is sick. I remember when this happened, and the thread about it. Seem to remember some dopers not feeling overly simpathetic about the dog’s death. Between this and scylla’s vegetarian thread in the pit I sometimes lose faith in SDMB folk.
I agree wholeheartedly Pez (I read like three lines of that anti-veggie thread and gagged and closed the window)!
As for the doggie thing, I read an amazingly similar story today. A small Pekkinese dog was thrown out of the window of a Taxi somewhere in Beijing and a police officer arrived almost immediately at the scene. He went absolutely ape and everyone in his department was looking for the owner of the dog for a while, presumably to met out some hefty punishment of the non-official kind.
They claim to have never tracked him down, but I’m going to allow myself to assume he was tracked down and will spend the next 20 years in re-education and labour camps in Wuhan.
As for the dog, the policeman got him help soon enough to save his life, but he was partially paralyzed and has been reduced to crawling around. However, he has found a home among about fifty other victims of doggie-crime and receives acupuncture and herbal remedies on a daily basis to aid his recovery.
While this story is kind of sad, it makes me happy so many people cared about him enough to save his life and rehabilitate him.
Okay, I’m not going to address the vegetarian thread, but I will defend the events in the last thread.
This killing was awful. There is absolutely no doubt that the guy responsible is an extremely sick and horrible individual. Hell, I have a dog, and can’t fathom anything like that happening to him.
But I don’t think that the reactions in the last thread were anything to “lose faith in the boards” over. I mean, c’mon, it’s an absolutely disgusting crime, but did it really deserve a fund of $12,000, just to find the sleazeball? The article itself sums up the views of everybody in the last thread: the money was “more than the reward in many local missing-child cases.”
Okay, so people love dogs. A dog killed in such cold blood definitely tugs at the heartstrings. But does it REALLY deserve the flood of media coverage that it got? I mean Christ, it was almost bigger than OJ.
People in the last thread weren’t being evil, or insensitive. They were just saying that it seems like there was a really disproportionate amount of money and attention being lavished on this case. It seems like if you’re going to raising $12,000 to find the killer of a pet, and give it more media coverage than the Lewinski scandal, you should be willing to do the same for the life of a human.
But hey, that can’t really be expected. After all, the killing of a regular, everyday person is just so boring.
:rolleyes:
On the other, I bet if some guy pulled a child out of a car into traffic the fund would be pretty hefty as well.
Is it bad that the sence of outrage isn’t that much different between a horrific killing of a family pet and a child? I actually think it points to the fact that we have the luxury of being compassionate and loving toward all sorts of creatures. This is a good thing. Killing a beloved family member is bad, m’kay?
I live in San Jose, so I may be getting better coverage than others, but…
I’m really worried about this man.
There’s the Leo incident.
There’s also the reports of him beating an injured stray dog to death (with a 28" nightstick) while he was a security guard in the Navy. Aparenty, others at the base (in Puerto Rico) were feeding the stray. It appraoched him on duty and he beat it to death.
He was originally arrested because he went missing with a Pacific Bell van. He returned five days later and told police that while swerving to avoid a deer, the van hurtled down a 450’ cliff, totalling it. He was uninjured.
He was released on bail initially, but rearrested after guards found a makeshift weapon under the matress of his bed. Charged with having a weapon in a prison facility, new bail set at $200,000.
He’s had prior arrests, but they won’t mention what they are in the newspapers…only that they exist.
He’s dangerous and not just to animals. I hope he’s locked away for a LONG, long, long time.
Another thing to keep in mind is that many times, people who are cruel to animals are cruel to other people too. Animal abuse and child abuse are frequently related, and in some areas animal control officials are being trained to check for signs of abuse to children when they investigate an animal abuse complaint.
So for all we know, putting this dude in jail may actually save a child from getting hurt. I noticed in the OP that he has a fiancee. I hope he doesn’t get conjugal visits - it would probably be a good thing if he was prevented from breeding himself.
I can’t read this story without thinking that, even with the national attention, no reward of that size was offered for catching the killer of Jon Benet Ramsey. Well, one was offered by a tabloid, but they clearly expected to profit by it…
Moderator’s Notes:malkavia, I’ve chopped your OP since, as I said above, it is copyrighted material. The Chicago Reader takes copyright law very seriously as one should expect a newspaper to naturally do. Please find a link to the article you wish to discuss and post it. Please do not post big fat chunks of protected work here again, or somethin’ terrible may happen. And since this is the second of these I’ve seen from you today, have ya got any others floating around here that we should know about? Thanks.
None, the same amount I donated to find Poochie’s killer. If you thought I was trying to be self-righteous, you’re mistaken; I only wanted to point out what I considered an oddity, that people were willing to donate money to find a dog’s killer, but not a human’s.
What Max said. Call me a cynical bastard, but I have a hard time believing that people would give that much money to the killer of a child under equally brutal circumstances.
After all, the case of the woman who drowned her five children barely made it onto the front page of the paper today. It got stuck under a headline reading “Downtown road work to get ugly.” Guess the kids just weren’t cute and fluffy enough (Of course, neither is the road work, but I’m going to assume that you get my point).
No, Max, that wasn’t my point, I was simply curious. But I’ll bet Jester doesn’t give any money to find the killers of children either.
Part of the difference is that when a human is killed, the police are going to be on the job, always. It’s what they’re for. When an animal is killed, it’s often hard to get the authorities to take it seriously.
Well, the family itself did put up a $100,000 reward to find the killer. It hasn’t been claimed, shock.
There is no fund started by concerned citizens because most citizens think either the parents did it, or know who did. Evidence points at something in that direction.
BTW…if this psycho had grabbed a baby and tossed it into traffic, the uproar would’ve been 100x louder, and most certainly a fund of larger proportions would have been started. It’s as much this mental patient’s method of killing as his choice of victim.
Very true. Didn’t give none to Poochie’s case, either.
This is actually a very good point. I hadn’t looked at it that way, and it definitely makes sense.
I still have two problems, though:
a) there are a whole lotta other animal abuse cruelty cases out there that don’t get donations. I know that this one was particularly graphic and horrible, but there are worse ones out there. I honestly think that if the dog had been some big, ugly doberman (assuming for a second that the guy could’ve lifted a big ugly doberman out of the car), there wouldn’t be nearly as much of a fund.
b) It still doesn’t explain the media attention. Like I said, 5 kids get drowned, it’s barely on the front page. Doggie’s parents finally get justice, it gets a nice, full-color photo the next day. And again, had the dog not been so adorable and cute, the media probably wouldn’t have cared.
Two things Jester…I don’t know where you are, but here in Chicago, I haven’t been able to get through an hour this morning without hearing the grisly details of that idiot murdering her kids. I’ve seen pictures of them, videotapes, analysis, news. It’s a big deal.
Sadly, I think the media attention for Leo was huge because of our horribly weird and jaded society. Some of us are completely desenstized to people being killed, adults, children, innocent, guilty, by accident or on purpose. I hear about people being killed a hundred times a day. But for some reason I still can’t get a grip on the fact that someone would THROW A DOG INTO TRAFFIC. It truly is shocking to me. It’s the ol’ hollywood convention “DON’T LET THE DOG GET KILLED”. That’s why those freaking Pemmican beef jerky ads bother me so much. Kill a pup? WHY?