Men face jail in boiling water, hammer attacks on dogs

MICHIGAN -- A Bay City man told authorities he did not know what to do after spilling hot water on his pet schnauzer. So he took the dog outside and ran it over twice, killing it, authorities said.

Aaron Bellor, 22, has been charged with animal cruelty, which carries a possible four-year prison sentence for a conviction, according to the Bay County Sheriff’s Office. Bellor’s case is one of two bizarre animal cruelty cases the sheriff’s office has been investigating.

Bellor’s dog, named Sassy, had been given to him by friends or family because they could no longer keep it, according to Bay County Sheriff’s Lt. Jim Chlebowski.

Bellor told authorities he was making grits with boiling water around Jan. 22 and inadvertently knocked the pan over on his Schnauzer Sassy, scalding it. Supposedly not knowing what to do, he left his house with the injured dog and drove from Bay City to neighboring Portsmouth Township, Chlebowski said.

Once he arrived, he put the dog down, and ran the pooch over with his car. As the dog laid there still breathing, the 22-year-old finished the job by running over the dog one more time. Bay County Sheriff’s Lt. Jim Chlebowski said that it didn't look like the dog's injuries were too severe and that a veterinarian would have been able to treat it. This all could have been avoided.

Bellor is accused of dropping the dog on the ground and then running it over with his car. When he realized that the dog was not dead, he ran it over a second time, Chlebowski said, noting that the dog’s injuries from the boiling water were not too severe.

“If he’d have taken the dog to the veterinarian, the dog could have been treated,” Chlebowski said.
Bellor told a number of people he was sorry he killed the dog, Chlebowski said.

In an unrelated case, Derek Keyes, 50, also of Bay City, is charged with animal cruelty and faces a potential 15-year sentence because he is a felon. He was also on probation Feb. 8 when, Chlebowski said, he attacked his roommate’s pit bull with a hammer.

Keyes, who was highly intoxicated, was upset that his roommate had not paid the rent, so he dumped detergent into his roommate’s fish tank, killing the fish, and then took the pit bull, named Lizzy, into the basement and hit it repeatedly with a hammer, Chlebowski said.

The pit bull is expected to survive.

(Detroit Free Press - Feb 12, 2014)