Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office<\/a> identified him as Nikolas Hart, 25. <\/p>\n\u201cThis defendant is accused of assaulting his girlfriend on prior occasions, then later killing a defenseless animal in a violent outburst,\u201d Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman said in a statement. \u201cThat kind of criminal behavior will land you in prison. We will prove these charges in court and seek the full punishment under the law,” he added.<\/p>\n
Hochman said Hart was arrested on the following charges: <\/p>\n
One felony count of animal crueltyOne misdemeanor count each of injury to a spouse or cohabitant and attempting to prevent or dissuade a victim\/witnessThree misdemeanor counts of disobeying a court order to not contact the victim<\/p>\n
Hart pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Monday, said Hochman. <\/p>\n
Prosecutors said Hart killed the rabbit, whose name was Momo, during what authorities described as a violent outburst inside the couple’s apartment on February 11. <\/p>\n
Hart allegedly stomped on the animal and then placed it in a trash bag before throwing it from their second-story apartment. The rabbit died from blunt force injuries, officials said.<\/p>\n
Authorities also said Hart previously assaulted his girlfriend and violated court orders prohibiting contact with her.<\/p>\n
Hart’s bail was set at $150,000. A judge issued a protective order barring him from owning or possessing animals while the case is pending.<\/p>\n
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 16.<\/p>\n
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If convicted, prosecutors said he faces up to eight years in state prison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VAN NUYS, Calif. (TNND) \u2014 A California man was accused of killing his girlfriend’s 2-month-old pet rabbit by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152],"class_list":{"0":"post-261030","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bakersfield","8":"tag-bakersfield","9":"tag-bakersfield-headlines","10":"tag-bakersfield-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}