Feb 10, 2009 6:46 pm US/Eastern
N.J. Man Accused In Sinister Animal Cruelty Plot
Allegedly Outfitted Fence To Neighbor's Property With Nails; Succeeds In Attempt To Injure German Shepherds
MIDDLETOWN, N.J. (CBS) ―
A Middletown man is accused of attempting to harm his neighbor's three dogs.
Michael Flynn said his neighbor hammered 16 four-inch nails into his wooden fence so that his three German Shepherds would cut themselves when they walked by.
Flynn's white shepherd, Boo, was cut on his face.
"How could somebody hate little animals, puppies like that?" he said.
Flynn realized something was suspicious when he saw Boo come in with cuts on face, so he followed the trail of blood in the snow and it led him to a spot behind his bushes.
"I just walked over. I know there was some wire my neighbor put up. Then, I saw the spikes," Flynn said. "They freaked me out."
His wife was shocked as well.
"It just scares me. If one of them got their eyes poked out, that would be devastating. It's ugly and it's scary," Colleen Flynn said.
The couple's neighbor, David Lench, has been charged with animal cruelty and faces thousands of dollars in fines.
CBS 2 HD knocked on his door, but no one answered.
The Monmouth County SPCA chief said Flynn's teenage son witnessed Lench placing the nails.
"He saw Mr. Lench banging nails three weeks ago and asked, 'What are you doing? Do not put moth balls out there'. And he said, 'I am fixing the fence,' and scurried off," Victor "Buddy" Amato told CBS 2 HD.
Back in May, Lench paid a $1,000 fine for putting moth balls along the same fence, and one of the dogs tried to eat them.
"I opened his mouth and the moth ball fell out," Flynn said.
"It seems to me to be an act of frustration," said neighbor Michael Quigley.
Frustration or not, Lench will be in court this month to answer to the charges of trying to hurt the dogs, and he could face jail time.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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