City man charged in dog's killing
It had multiple stab wounds
A Boston man was arrested yesterday and charged with fatally stabbing a terrier whose owner allegedly owed him money for illegal drugs, police said.
Darryl Mack, 40, was identified by the dog's owner and arrested at a Brighton address on cruelty to animal and home invasion charges, police said.
He is scheduled to be arraigned today in Roxbury District Court.
About 11:30 a.m. yesterday, police responded to a breaking-and-entering call on Calumet Street in Boston's Mission Hill section, where they found the dog and its owner, whose name was not released.
The dog, identified by a neighbor as Romulus, had multiple stab wounds, and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals pronounced him dead at the scene, police said. No weapon was recovered, police said.
In a statement to police, the dog owner said Mack entered his home because he was owed money for drugs the dog owner had purchased.
The dog's owner told police he was hiding in the bathroom when he heard his dog squealing.
As the suspect left, he said the dog owner would suffer the same fate, police said.
The neighbor, who overheard the incident and declined to be identified, said everyone in the neighborhood could hear the dog's yelping.
She added that the dog was a neighborhood favorite, often nicknamed Toto after the dog in the Wizard of Oz movie, and stood no more than 6 inches off the ground.
David Procopio, a spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, said in a telephone interview that authorities take crimes against animals seriously.
''Animals, too, have rights of their own protected under the law, and we don't take that lightly," he said. ''The fact that a person has the capacity to hurt an animal means they quite possibly also have the capacity to hurt a human being."
