Fairmont, W. Virginia – A West Virginia man is facing an animal cruelty charge for allegedly beating his 10-week-old puppy to death. The accused man, Malaki Richardson, 20, of Clarksburg, told the authorities that he beat his boxer puppy because the pup “tore up the bathroom.”

As reported by WBOY News, the Fairmont Police Department was called out to an apartment on Sept. 5 after receiving a report that someone was beating their dog to death. The caller said the pup “appeared to be barely breathing, completely limp, tongue hanging out its mouth and bleeding from the mouth.” 

Another witness backed up the caller’s report, telling the authorities that Richardson, “beat the dog until it was literally dead,” and that “the dog was bleeding out its mouth and tongue hanging out.”

Responding officers did not find Richardson, or his dogs, at the apartment, but they did observe a blood-stained sheet next to puppy pee pads. The police eventually located the suspect at the Hickman Run Animal Hospital, and in a Mirandized statement, Richardson stated that “the dogs had tore up the bathroom,” and that he “grabbed [the dog] by the scruff of the neck and beat its a**,” before Richardson “admitted to hitting the dog in the front leg area four times while holding [it] in the air.”

Richardson was booked into the North Central Regional Jail on an animal cruelty charge.

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