A wealthy company director stabbed his neighbour’s dog to death with the largest knife he could find because it was mauling his pet labrador, a court has been told.
Mark Deeley, 49, was heard to shout out “Max”, the name of the German shepherd dog, before plunging the knife through its heart during the incident in November last year.
The attack, which happened in the front garden of Mr Deeley’s large detached house in the suburb of Gibbet Hill, Coventry, was the climax of a dispute between neighbours.
Finuala Sheridan, opening for the prosecution, told Coventry Magistrates Court that the five-year-old German shepherd belonged to Mr Deeley’s neighbours, Susan Kaur and her brother, Tarlo Singh.
She said that there had been “something of a history” between the couple, who had two dogs, and Mr Deeley, who owned an elderly yellow labrador called Bertie.
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“Both properties are large detached houses sitting in their own grounds divided variously by a fence and a hedge,” said Ms Sheridan.
“Between 7am and 7.30am, Mr Deeley was in his garden with his dog, Bertie. What follows is the subject of a factual dispute but it seems that, for whatever reason, Max attacked the golden labrador.
“Mr Deeley, in his subsequent interview, says that at that point he left the two dogs, went through his house and then had to go upstairs in order to reach the kitchen area, where he picked the largest knife that he could find.
“Mr Deeley picked up the knife and returned to the dogs, who he would say were still fighting, and then, he says in order to protect Bertie, he stabbed Max once.”
Magistrates were told that the German shepherd, which had crawled underneath the hedge to enter Mr Deeley’s property, died almost instantly.
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Subsequently Mr Deeley’s dog, then aged 12, was found to have bruising and superficial lacerations to the throat.
The prosecution allege that Mr Deeley, who runs an accommodation lettings agency, acted without lawful excuse when he picked up the knife to kill the dog. The defendant denies a single count of criminal damage.
Giving evidence, Mr Singh, 39, suggested that Mr Deeley butchered the dog after calling it by name to his side of the fence.
He said: “Max was barking. I looked out of the window but what alerted me more was when Mark Deeley called him over. I heard him call Max over. It was loud. Basically he stabbed him near his front leg”.
Mr Singh said he rushed out of the house with his sister Mrs Kaur, 39, to find the dog dying by the hedge which separated the two properties. The blade had pierced the heart.
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Mrs Kaur called the police and a dog handler to retrieve Max’s body.
Mr Deeley was interviewed and admitted stabbing the dog to protect his pet labrador. He insisted that his actions had been reasonable.
Mark Deeley insisted that he took action because he believed that his pet Labrador Bertie was being killed, and that he was himself terrified that he could have been attacked.
He told the court in evidence that he felt he had no choice other than to stab the German Shepherd dog. He had not wanted to commit as act of violence.
Asked to describe the attack, Mr Deeley said: “He just went straight for Bertie, who in an instant was just knocked over. They combined up, if you like, into a sort of ball of black and yellow.
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“Initially, I wanted to split them up but I realised that if I had gone across there I was putting myself in grave danger. I couldn’t approach at that point, so I came back inside the house to start looking for something that I could use as a weapon.”
Mr Deeley said that in his frantic search for a weapon he considered a microphone stand and a wooden baton. By that time he could hear yelping and whining coming from the garden. Max had Bertie pinned to the ground with its jaws around the dog’s throat, he said.
“In my opinion, Bertie was being killed,” said Mr Deeley. “I thought ‘I am going to have to do this’. I needed to protect Bertie and I needed to protect myself, and I drew the knife back and struck once.
“At that point I just did not feel I had any choice. The intention was to disengage Max from Bertie and to immobilise the dog in such a way that it wouldn’t come for me.
“I did not want to use the knife unless it was a question of absolutely having to. I used as much force as I saw was reasonable in order to prevent the attack. I just quite simply thought it was a brutal attack that was resulting in my dog being made ready to be killed.”
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The trial, which is expected to last two days, continues.