TAMPA, FL \u2014 A 37-year-old man was arrested in connection with the death of a family member\u2019s 6-year-old Chihuahua after a May 4 incident at a home on West Cordelia Street, Tampa police said in a news release.<\/p>\n
Officers responded to the home at about 10 p.m. and found the suspect, Christopher Malone, was drunk and intentionally inflicted a fatal injury on the 4-pound dog, Rufus, after it walked past him, police said.<\/p>\n
A subsequent investigation by Hillsborough County Animal Control confirmed that the animal\u2019s death was caused by blunt force trauma.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe depravity required to intentionally harm a defenseless, four-pound animal is deeply disturbing,\u201d Chief Lee Bercaw said. \u201cThis was a senseless act of violence against a family pet that offered nothing but companionship. Our hearts go out to the family who lost their beloved dog in such a tragic way, and we are committed to ensuring this individual is held fully accountable for his actions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Malone was arrested on Tuesday following the findings of Hillsborough County Animal Control, according to police. He was charged with aggravated cruelty to animals and transported to Orient Road Jail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, FL \u2014 A 37-year-old man was arrested in connection with the death of a family member\u2019s 6-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-272051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}