The Environment Prosecutor requests that the man accused of killing a dog in Mediona (Alt Penedès) in November 2020 be sentenced to one year in prison. The requests correspond to a crime of animal abuse resulting in death and a crime of serious disobedience to the agents of the authority. For this reason, the public ministry also requests three years of disqualification for possession or exercising any profession related to animals and a fine of 720 euros.
The prosecutor explains that the defendant immobilized a dog in the middle of the street in Mediona after the animal jumped the fence of the neighbor’s house, who had taken it in for a few days because it had been found lost in the street. The public ministry reports that the man persevered in immobilizing the dog by grabbing it by the neck, despite the fact that several people asked him to release it. According to some testimonies on the day of the events, the man was walking his dog when this other dog assaulted them, and he immobilized it to protect himself.
In the indictment, the prosecution points out that some people provided the defendant with duct tape, leashes and zip ties to block the dog, in an immobilization process that lasted 26 minutes and in which the animal had no capacity to resist. The prosecutor assures that the man was aware of the suffering he was causing the animal, and says that several neighbors asked him to stop putting pressure on him. Ignoring him, he explains that the man started saying things like “I’ll kill him, I’ll break his neck.” With them, “the intention to end the life of the dog is clearly evident,” says the prosecutor.
At the same time, he recalls that a local police patrol from Capellades (Anoia) went to the scene, who had been notified by the neighbor, who was an agent of the body, that he was out of service at that time. The prosecutor points out that the policemen asked him to leave the animal, but he did not listen to them either, while the dog began to have convulsions.
Finally, the public ministry recalls that the autopsy concluded that the dog had several bruises as a result of trauma compatible with blows and had congested lungs and kidneys. “No lesion compatible with an infectious disease was detected, being an undoubted conclusion that the animal died from mechanical asphyxia due to strangulation,” asserted the prosecutor, who affirmed that the animal had a “high degree of suffering.”
The investigation has been carried out for more than two years by the Investigating Court Number 2 of Vilafranca del Penedès, which has sent the case to trial for a crime of animal abuse and disobedience to law enforcement officers. The FAADA foundation requests that the defendant be sentenced to one and a half years in prison and four years of disqualification and that he pay a fine of 12,000 euros. The date on which the case will be judged is still pending.
