A man who denies a charge of causing unnecessary suffering to a dog is set to contest the case on November 21.
Rolandas Kverderis (49), with an address listed as Thomas Street in Portadown, is charged in relation to May 14.
The defendant had the assistance of a Lithuanian language interpreter at an earlier sitting of Craigavon Magistrates’ Court.
A police officer told an earlier court the PSNI received a report on May 14 that a woman “observed a male kill a dog – which was described as a Jack Russell-type dog”.
The woman followed the man on foot and guided police to the location and the defendant was at the corner of West Street and North Street in Portadown. He was intoxicated.
The officer said police heard the defendant “mumbling something about drinking in his girlfriend’s house and that the dog killed a small cat and he was taking the dog away”.
Police attended a veterinary surgery and the dog was alive but had “suffered shock and had soreness around its limb areas”. The officer added: “The initial reporting person thought he (the defendant) had killed the dog”.
The officer said the witness said the defendant carried the dog “in a bag” and walked into bushes and she told police the defendant “began to beat the dog and slam if off the ground”.
It was alleged the defendant then walked off and allegedly told the witness: “You don’t know what you have done. I will get your own kind to kill you”. The officer said that left the witness in fear.
The officer said another witness said the defendant was “either punching the bag with the dog in it or swinging it”.
The officer said one of the witnesses made a video recording on a phone but on a police body-worn recording of the original footage it was unclear “what was really happening”.
When interviewed the defendant told police he “denied the offence of animal cruelty. He stated he was angry at the dog and placed it into a bag with the intention of carrying it to the park and leaving it there”.
The officer said the dog belonged to the defendant’s girlfriend’s daughter.
A defence lawyer told the earlier court it seemed the dog had killed a cat and the defendant had taken the dog and “was going to release” the dog.
He said the defendant put the dog in a bag to stop it “from biting and scratching” him.
The lawyer added: “His intention was to leave the dog there. He completely denies punching and hitting the dog”.
The lawyer said although it was said the dog was in “shock” there did not appear to be any physical injuries. He said it was “quite an old dog” and it might have had “underlying conditions”.
He added that the defendant’s “actions, even by his own account, are not entirely satisfactory but there are levels and it might well be at a much lower level than first anticipated or the complainants believed it to be. They may have been seeing something else that may not have been occurring”.
District Judge Michael Ranaghan had told the earlier court: “Even putting a dog in a bag is an act of the utmost cruelty. What he is then said to have done is disgusting inhumane behaviour. The cat may have been killed by the dog but a dog is going to go for a cat, it really doesn’t have a choice in that.
“As apparently intelligent human beings we do have a choice into whether we attack a dog or not. All of these are premised by the fact that at the minute these are allegations and there is an awful lot this court does not know.”
