A couple have been disqualified from keeping dogs for 10 years after failing to get medical help for their pet who was starving to death.
Bull terrier Casanova was taken into a vet in Victoria, London, on 27 November 2023. In the vet’s witness statement, he said the owner claimed to have come home and found her dead body, saying she’d been ill for a few days but that they’d had no credit on their phone to call for a vet.
Casanova weighed just 11.85kg but should have weighed between 25-30kg and that her intestines were ‘completely empty’. She was covered in sores and faeces.
Vets alerted the RSPCA and Inspector Phil Norman launched an investigation.
The vet’s statement added: “[Casanova] was suffering from a prolonged period of anorexia or not being able to keep her food down. All of this suffering could have been prevented by bringing her to a veterinary practice for medical attention.”
Nelson Pierre Luke (DoB: 03/03/1992) and Shona Jayda Patricia Thomas-Ross (DoB: 17/01/1998), both of Northfield Avenue, London, were sentenced at Willesden Magistrates’ Court on 5 December.
Luke previously pleaded guilty to one offence, under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, of causing unnecessary suffering to Casanova. Thomas-Ross pleaded not guilty but was convicted.
Luke was sentenced to 16 weeks in prison, suspended for 18 months, and ordered to carry out 15 days of Rehabilitation Activity Requirement, 26 days of an accredited programme and 250 hours of unpaid work. He was ordered to pay £300 in costs, a £187 victim surcharge and was disqualified from keeping dogs for 10 years.
Thomas-Ross was sentenced to a 12-month community order with 20 days of Rehabilitation Activity Requirement. She was ordered to pay a £100 fine, a £114 victim surcharge and £300 in costs, and disqualified from keeping dogs for 10 years.
Sentencing the pair, the chair of the bench said that, in all his years working in the magistrates’s court, it was the most horrible case of cruelty he’d ever come across.
