Isaias Lerner, MD was arrested Tuesday.
According to an arrest affidavit, witnesses told police they saw a dog tied to a tree outside his home in the 10300 block of East Broadview Drive on Tuesday morning.
"The witnesses' attention was drawn to the area by some noise and visual observation of a male subject hamming the dog on the head and also using a screwdriver and impaling the pet with a screwdriver," said Allan Sjoberg, assistant chief of Bay Harbor Islands Police.
The witnesses said an older man, identified as Lerner, repeatedly hit the dog in the head with a hammer and then stabbed the dog with a screwdriver in what they described as a grinding motion.
Brain matter appeared to be coming out of the dog's head, the witnesses told police.
[Could you stand by and watch this happen? Two grown men stood and watched and didn't lift a finger. They could have tackled him, punched him out, knocked him down. He looks fairly frail in the arrest photo. But to just stand there and watch? And the worst is that the dog didn't die quickly. It "wobbled around for a while before finally dying".]
Neighbors were stunned by the news.
"I have been their neighbor for twelve years. 'So you've seen the dog?' Yeah, it comes in my garbage all the time," said one woman. "My dogs, they bark between the gate. I'm sad. It's just a benign dog that's sweet."
According to Bay Harbor Islands police Capt. John Robertazzi, the doctor told police he was fed up with his beagle's misbehavior.
He said he attacked the dog because it 'was defecating and urinating in the residence and kept running away.'
According to the arrest affidavit, Lerner told police he hit the dog with a hammer several times. He said the dog wobbled around for a while before dying.
The arrest affidavit says Lerner is a doctor with the South Broward Physicians Group, 1487 Lyons Rd. in Coconut Creek, which was closed Wednesday.
"It sounds totally irrational -- not like him," said one patient.
"To me, I am shocked," said Dr. Albert Morjaim, who said Lerner was his professor in medical school. "To do harm to any animal, to do harm to anybody, and as a physician, it disgraces my profession."
Lerner was out of jail on Wednesday.
(Local10 - Sept 5, 2012)
Update to Story:
A South Florida doctor killed himself Thursday, two days after police say he killed a beagle outside his home, clubbing the dog with a hammer and stabbing it with a screwdriver.
Dr. Isaias Lerner Biber, 65, who had an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, was found dead inside his Bay Harbor Islands home by a family member about 5:30 p.m., according to Miami-Dade County police. Officers are investigating his death as a suicide.
