{"id":242445,"date":"2026-05-24T16:51:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T16:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/242445\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T16:51:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T16:51:22","slug":"police-watertown-man-threw-puppy-against-wall-broke-its-leg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/242445\/","title":{"rendered":"Police: Watertown man threw puppy against wall, broke its leg"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) &#8211; A Watertown man is accused of throwing his puppy against a wall and breaking its leg.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">City police arrested John Cole, 30, on animal cruelty and drug possession charges.<\/p>\n<p>Alleged abuse<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">According to court documents, Cole, \u201cin an especially depraved or sadistic manner,\u201d threw his dog against a wall, \u201ccausing the left rear femur to become fractured.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The incident allegedly happened in July 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Police said an acquaintance later took the five-month-old blue nose pit bull to a veterinarian, who performed surgery on the puppy\u2019s leg.<\/p>\n<p>Evidence of prior injuries<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">According to police, the vet saw evidence that the dog had been injured before, including other broken bones that had healed. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Police were notified and an arrest warrant was issued.<\/p>\n<p>Arrest and charges<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Cole was arrested on State Street on Thursday. Police allege that he had cocaine on him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">He was charged with a felony count of aggravated cruelty to animals and a misdemeanor count of criminal possession of a controlled substance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Cole was released following his arraignment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">There is no word on the puppy\u2019s whereabouts.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 WWNY. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) &#8211; A Watertown man is accused of throwing his puppy against a wall and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6343,101,31267,94779,9,11,10,49,51,50,104,7524],"class_list":["post-242445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-animal-cruelty","tag-arrest","tag-drug-possession","tag-john-cole","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-police","tag-watertown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}