Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 5, 1994 TAG: 9411070038
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Welcome to my funeral parlor," he said.
For the next hour, the videotape showed snarling pit bull terriers on a rampage - crushing a kitten in their jaws, torturing a smaller dog for nearly an hour before it died, mauling each other to near death - all while Hunt and other spectators cheered them on.
After viewing the videotape Friday in Roanoke Circuit Court, a judge sentenced Hunt to 10 years in prison on charges of cruelty to animals and staging dogfights.
"A 10-year-old knows that you don't do things of this nature," Judge Richard Pattisall told Hunt, 21, stopping three years short of imposing the maximum punishment.
Authorities say dogfights are not uncommon in Roanoke among a small circle of people who find it entertaining to watch pit bulls fighting to their deaths, or attacking smaller, weaker animals.
"It's some type of sick, demented sport for these people, and we want to put a stop to it in the city of Roanoke," Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Greg Phillips said.
Phillips said the videotape of pit bull terriers, including one named Dutchess, killing a kitten and a smaller dog "screams out" for lengthy prison terms for people like Hunt.
"What type of person would take a poor, defenseless kitten and man's best friend and subject them to this kind of torture?" the prosecutor asked.
Because most dogfights in Roanoke are clouded in secrecy and limited to a small subculture of dog owners and spectators, it's rare for authorities to make an arrest. The charges against Hunt came almost by accident.
In July, police were looking for drugs when they executed a search warrant at Hunt's home on Clifton Street Northwest. Instead, they found a videotape marked "dogfights."
Using dates on the videotape and other clues, authorities put together a 17-count indictment that documented a pattern of cruelty that lasted from November 1991 to October 1992. As part of an agreement reached Friday, all but five of the charges against Hunt were dropped.
Most of the fights captured on videotape were held in Hunt's yard or in a garage behind his home. The tape opens with a scene in which Hunt and several other men let a kitten loose in the garage and then encourage a pit bull to track it down.
As the dog grasps the kitten in its jaws and crushes it, spectators can be heard saying gleefully, "Shake it, Dutchess, shake it." Later, the dead kitten is tossed aside, and the camera shifts to a stray dog that wags its tail obliviously minutes before being set loose from a pen to die.
"That dog is not a pit bull; he is obviously bait," Phillips said. During the next 45 minutes, as many as four different pit bulls attack the dog before it finally dies.
In other scenes, the pit bulls are squared off and ordered to attack each other. One injured and whimpering dog is kicked back into the fight as it tries to retreat.
Because of a two-year gap between the offenses and Hunt's arrest, authorities are not sure what happened to the dogs pictured in the videotape. Hunt told police that he got rid of the animals.
Hunt did not testify Friday, and spoke only briefly just before he was sentenced. "I'm sorry for the acts that I've committed," he said. "Needless to say, I've done wrong."
Defense attorney Jonathan Kurtin had argued that while the videotapes may be disturbing, it wasn't the same as if Hunt had injured or killed a human being.
But Phillips suggested that the life of the animals killed might be worth more than that of the human beings who tortured them to death.
"What is that person's life worth?" he asked the judge.
by CNB