Man who bit mother’s Shih Tzu so hard its eye popped out of its socket is sentenced to a year in prison
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 08 November, 2015, 7:08pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 08 November, 2015, 7:08pm
Tribune News Service
Cujo, before he was bitten and choked, which resulted in him losing an eye. Photo: New York Daily News
All Michelle Etzel ever wanted was for her son, David, to get help.
And now, David Etzel, 37, might get his chance: He was sentenced to a year in prison for animal abuse, and with that he will receive alcohol counselling and rehabilitation services.
“I think he might finally (get help),” Michelle Etzel said, “which is what I’ve wanted all along.”
His prison sentence stems from a drunken incident where he bit his mother’s Shih Tzu, Cujo, in the face so hard the dog’s eye popped out of its socket. Prosecutors said David Etzel was at the home he shared with his mother when he started playing with the dog.
The dog nipped him, then David Etzel grabbed Cujo by the neck and bit him.
David Etzel, 37, faces a year in jail after jurors found him guilty of animal cruelty.
Michelle Etzel said the dog has recovered, but lost sight in the injured eye.
Prosecutor Judith Arco asked Circuit Court Judge Barry Cohen to give David Etzel the maximum of 18 months in prison.
Originally, Arco said her office offered a plea deal with David Etzel that would have allowed him to not go to jail and seek alcohol treatment instead. He rejected that deal and a jury convicted him.
Michelle Etzel told Cohen in court she didn’t want her son to go to jail, but since he refused to take the plea deal offered to him, there was no other way. She asked the judge to include alcohol rehabilitation programmes as part of his sentencing.
Without alcohol and anger management treatment, she said she feared her son would leave prison with an axe to grind against her.
“I’m afraid that when he gets out (of prison), he’s going to try and hurt me,” she said. “He said that if I throw him out of the house, he would set me and the house on fire. I am afraid of him.”
“She’s trying to make me sound like a monster,” David Etzel shot back from the defence podium. “She lies.”
Once he serves his year in jail, he will have two years of probation that could end early if David Etzel successfully completes his alcohol programme.
“I don’t think you’re necessarily an evil person,” Cohen told David Etzel. “The only way I can rationally figure out what happened in this case – it was a result of your alcoholism.”
