Man admits stabbing dog to death
After stabbing a dog to death for killing his rabbit, Andrew Joseph Salisbury said: “You know I had to do it. Life for a life.”
Thirty-seven-year-old Salisbury pleaded guilty in the Christchurch District Court yesterday to the Animal Welfare Act charge of cruel illtreatment of the dog.
Judge Stephen O’Driscoll remanded him on bail for sentencing on November 28. He asked for a pre-sentence report to cover his suitability for home or community detention.
Prosecutor Sergeant Paul Scott said the dog Falcon was taken to the address of Salisbury and a woman in Mairehau, for the dog owner to pick up her belongings which had been stored there.
“As previously arranged, the victim put Falcon in the backyard alongside another dog and a rabbit which was in a rabbit hutch,” said Sergeant Scott.
Falcon went into the hutch and killed the rabbit. The man who was with the dog owner then took the dog from the yard and tied it up to a utility vehicle parked in the driveway.
The woman who lived there phoned Salisbury and told him of the rabbit’s death.
Salisbury arrived home and found the dog in the driveway. He said, “Hold on, I have to grab something,” before going inside and getting a 35cm kitchen knife out of a drawer.
He stabbed the dog while it was yelping and hiding beneath the vehicle. He then dragged Falcon out from beneath the vehicle and stabbed it twice more. “Two of the stabs were with such force theat they went through the dog creating exit wounds.” The fatal wounds were to the lung, chest, spine, and abdomen. Salisbury then kicked the dog twice in the head.
During the incident, Falcon’s yelps could be heard by the occupants inside the address.
Salisbury then cleaned up the area with a water hose. He approached the man who had gone to the address with the dog owner, and told him: “You know I had to do it. Life for a life.”
Salisbury declined to say anything to the police when he was interviewed. He has no previous convictions.
An interim suppression order which had applied at Salisbury’s first appearance in August was not continued yesterday, after the guilty plea was entered.
Category: Focus
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