Middle GA man accused of shooting, beating neighbor’s dog to death with baseball bat
A south Monroe County man was jailed Saturday in the shooting and baseball-bat beating death of a neighbor’s dog.
A sheriff’s deputy was called to the Whispering Pines Mobile Home Park shortly after 7 a.m. that day by a woman who said her dog had leaped a fence and escaped her yard.
According to the deputy’s report, the woman, 29, said someone nearby heard a gunshot and saw a neighbor “beating (the) dog with a bat at the end of (a) driveway.”
The wounded dog, its name and breed not mentioned in the report, fled into some nearby woods.
The dog, later found alive but seriously hurt, was taken to an animal hospital for treatment but it died.
Earlier, on Saturday morning, the deputy went to the neighbor’s mobile home along state Highway 87 near the Bibb County line and spoke to the neighbor about what happened.
The neighbor, Bouaphanh Vanvensomphone, 78, at first said “there was no incident with a dog,” the deputy’s write-up noted. “He later admitted to shooting the dog with a .22 rifle and then grabbing a baseball bat and beating (the dog).”
Vanvensomphone was said to have at first told the deputy that he has chickens in his backyard and, according to the report, implied that he was protecting them.
But Vanvensomphone later said the dog had not bothered the chickens and that the dog was just “standing at the end of his driveway,” the report said.
Vanvensomphone was jailed on a charges that included aggravated cruelty to animals, which can be punishable by up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of $15,000.