Jury selection in the trial of Aaron A. Bellor, 23, was to begin Tuesday, Jan. 6, before Bay County Chief Circuit Judge Kenneth W. Schmidt. Defense attorney Edward M. Czuprynski requested and received an adjournment.
A previous trial date of Nov. 25 was also adjourned. A new date has not yet been set, but Czuprynski was emphatic that his client will not at any point be entering into a plea deal.
Bellor is charged with single counts of killing or torturing an animal and cruelty to or abandoning an animal. The former charge is a four-year felony, while the latter is a 93-day misdemeanor.
The charges stem from the Jan. 22 death of a schnauzer named Sassy, whom prosecutors say Bellor twice ran over after spilling scalding water on her.
According to a police report, Bellor on Jan. 31 told a Bay County Sheriff's detective that he was boiling water to make hot cereal when he accidentally spilled the pot's contents on Sassy.
Bellor wrapped a towel around the dog and put her in a bathtub with cold water, but she was howling and patches of fur were coming off of her, he told the detective.
Bellor then put Sassy in his car along with his girlfriend's son, according to police reports. He drove the child to school, left the dog in the car while he signed the boy in, then started driving aimlessly, he told the detective. He eventually came to the area of German and South Mielens roads in rural Portsmouth Township.
Bellor told the detective he let Sassy out of the car, but she was whining and walking slowly with her head down. She went to a field and Bellor turned his car around. He saw the dog was digging a spot in the middle of the field and he called back to her.
"She walked into the road in front of him," the detective wrote in his report. "When she got in front of the car, he hit the gas. He meant to run her over. When he seen Sassy out there in the field just to lay down he felt bad."
Bellor said he panicked and ran over Sassy going about 5 mph. Seeing her still moving, he ran over her a second time, then drove away, according to the police report.
Bellor also told the detective he had a weird feeling and blacked out, the report states.
"When he drove out there it was not his intention to run the dog over," the detective wrote in his report. "However he did say he intentionally called the dog over to run it over not once but twice."
Authorities began investigating Sassy's death the day of her death after receiving a call from a person who witnessed the incident. Two days later, Bellor called Bay County Animal Control to report he was the one who killed the dog, according to court records.
Several Portsmouth Township residents who witnessed the killing testified in a September preliminary examination.
Wendy West, Bellor's girlfriend and owner of Sassy, also testified that she received a phone call at work that morning from Bellor telling her the dog was missing.
Later in the day, she called Bay County Animal Control to see if they had found a missing dog and was informed that a dog similar to the one she described was at the facility. She went on to say that animal control officials told her they would contact her the following day, but that never happened. So, she went to animal control the next morning and was asked to identify the dog.
"It scared and upset me, so I stood about 25-feet away and there it was sitting on top of the freezer, but I couldn't necessarily say it was mine or not," she said. "I didn't know at the time so I told her it was not."
She then testified that on Jan. 23, Bellor told her that he accidentally spilled boiling water on the dog before taking her child to school that morning and then panicked before hitting the dog with his car.
She testified that he told her he was scared and panicked and that he didn't know what to do.
"He said that he ran over her," she testified.
Prior to the September hearing, Bellor underwent an evaluation at the Center for Forensic Psychiatry in Ypsilanti, in light of a suicide attempt, according to Czuprynski. Based on that evaluation, Bay County District Judge Dawn A. Klida deemed Bellor competent to stand trial.
(MLive - Dec 31, 2014)
Earlier:
- Men face jail in boiling water, hammer attacks on dogs
- Arizona man says he gave schnauzer to friend days before the dog was killed in Bay County
- Woman gathers 836 signatures seeking max penalty for Bay City man charged with killing dog by pouring boiling water on her then running over her with his car
No comments:
Post a Comment