A man has pleaded guilty to causing unnecessary suffering to a dog and has received a suspended jail term.
Rolandas Kverderis (49), with an address listed as Thomas Street, Portadown committed an offence on May 14 this year.
The defendant had the assistance of a Lithuanian language interpreter at Craigavon Magistrates’ Court on Friday.
The defendant has also been banned from keeping animals for five years and has been ordered to pay £300 to an animal charity.
The PSNI received a report on the afternoon of May 14 that a female “observed a male hit a dog – which was described as a Jack Russell-type dog”.
The female followed the man on foot and guided police to the location and the defendant was at the corner of West Street and North Street in Portadown. He was intoxicated.
The defendant was “mumbling something about drinking in his girlfriend’s house and that the dog killed the family cat and he was taking the dog away”.
A video showed the defendant “appear to be hitting something”.
A witness told police they saw the defendant carrying a dog “in a bag” and walking into bushes and he “began to beat the dog and slam it off the ground”. The defendant then walked off.
Another witness told police the defendant was “either punching the bag with the dog in it or swinging it” and had been “swearing”.
When interviewed the defendant told police “he was angry at the dog” and placed it into a bag with the intention of carrying it to a park and leaving it there but he denied hitting the animal or slamming it off the ground.
The court was told that when the dog was examined by a vet no injuries were found but there were “some signs of shock”.
The dog was described as “geriatric” and the dog was “sore on manipulation but there was no direct link that the vet made between the incident and anything he observed,” said the prosecutor.
A defence barrister said the dog belonged to the defendant’s girlfriend.
“Whatever the facts the reality is that fortunately there was no visible or palpable injury to the animal”.
He said the defendant had taken some alcohol and, “in anger” after the dog attacked another pet in his girlfriend’s house, he had taken the dog in a bag to “deposit it in a wooded area” to let it “fend for itself and potentially make its way home” which was “cruel in itself”.
The barrister said it was an “ugly” offence and the public are “pretty appalled by anybody attacking an animal and it can also be a bit of a red flag for other types of behaviour”.
He said the reality was it had been an incident “driven by bad temper” and it “happened fairly quickly” when he reacted to the dog attacking another pet.
The barrister said “whatever his physical assault might have been on the dog it doesn’t seem to have actually caused any material injuries”.
The lawyer said there was “inconsistency” in what witnesses described but on any analysis “it was cruel”.
District Judge Michael Ranaghan told the defendant: “Sometimes you have to take the emotion out of sentencing. Your actions towards that dog were disgusting.
“Anybody who can treat an animal like that does deserve prison” but the guilty plea was “the only thing that saves you from immediate custody”.
The judge said he was handing down a “deterrent sentence” of seven months suspended for one year “given your limited record”.
Added Judge Ranaghan: “Given your cruelty you will be disqualified from owning any animal; that includes looking after somebody else’s pet or indeed even transporting a pet” for five years.
He also ordered him to pay compensation of £300 “to an animal charity of some kind,” adding that the amount “doesn’t really justify” what the defendant had done “but it is something to mark the abhorrence of this court around that sort of treatment of an animal”.
