Sickening
Te Ahu Aaron Mankelow, 31, pleaded guilty to five charges of wilful cruelty to animals after he recorded himself on a cellphone tipping out five kittens from a box for his dog, and urging his dog to eat them.
It arose from an incident at a party at a house in Childers Road last September, prosecutor Vicki Thorpe told the court.
Mankelow was going into the property with his 18-month old pitbull dog Pepe.
Something in a truck parked alongside attracted the dog’s attention. When Mankelow looked inside, he saw five kittens, their eyes not yet open, in a cardboard box.
He took the box from the truck to a reserve alongside the property.
He tipped the kittens out of the box for his dog, which attacked them one by one, urged on by Mankelow, who recorded the whole attack on his cellphone.
All of the kittens were killed.
Someone called an SPCA officer who identified the remains of five kittens, with broken bones. At least one kitten had been disembowelled.
The officer estimated they were aged between six and 10 weeks.
Mankelow initially denied his actions, but then admitted it after being shown the video.
The law change promoted by Simon Bridges, increasing the maximum penalty for this sort of vile behaviour, can’t happen too soon.
Calling for a pre-sentence report, Judge Spear warned Mankelow that although community or home detention was a possibility, he could not rule out prison. This depended on the judge on the day.
Anything less than prison should not be a possibility. The maximum sentence is three years, and this case is so vile, that it should be at the higher end.
And the sick fucker is so proud of what he did, he recorded what he did on his cellphone.
This also reinforces my prejudices against pitbull owners. People who decide to buy a pitbull, rarely do so for good reasons.
His relatives hurled abuse and obscene gestures at reporters as they sought to question them. One member of the family told The Herald the incident had been over-publicised.
Nowhere near enough, I say. I hope the media show off who these relatives were hurlign abuse defending their kitten killing socio-path.