The Vitsyebsk District Court sentenced a woman and her neighbor to 1.5 years in prison for abusing a dog.
In April this year, a 53-year-old resident of the village of Pabiedzinshchyna asked her 67-year-old neighbor to help kill her shepherd dog because it had strangled seven chickens and a rooster.
The woman and her neighbor, both intoxicated, beat the dog with their fists and a metal sledgehammer, then put a tow rope around its neck and hanged it in a shed. Neighbors who heard the dog barking and whimpering stopped the abuse. They took the dog down from the hook and called the police.
At the trial, the woman fully admitted her guilt and expressed remorse. She was sentenced to 1.5 years in a general-regime penal colony under the article on cruelty to animals, the court’s press service reported.
The second defendant was sentenced under the same article to 1.5 years in prison with a two-year suspended sentence.
Both were ordered to undergo compulsory treatment for alcoholism.