ohmidog!

DNA from a dead pit bull’s mouth led to the arrest of a suspect in an Ohio home invasion — but not until after the suspect allegedly went on to shoot and kill a pregnant 16-year-old Akron girl.

David Stoddard was indicted Thursday for aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary in connection with a home invasion in Barberton on Oct. 6.

Three masked men burst into a house, robbed the occupants and shot and killed the family’s pit bull mix after it bit one of the intruders on the arm, according to News Channel 5.

Police investigating the crime swabbed the inside of the deceased dog’s mouth in hopes of finding DNA evidence that would lead to the bitten suspect.

On Dec. 5, Barberton police learned the sample had led to a potential match to Stoddard and began trying to find him — both at his home and through his attorney, who said Stoddard would turn himself in.

That didn’t happen, and police did not issue a warrant for Stoddard’s arrest, in part because they were hoping to confirm the DNA results first with a second test.

On Jan. 6, Stoddard allegedly broke into an Akron home and shot and killed 16-year-old Anna Karam, who was 4-months pregnant.

Stoddard is being held in the Summit County Jail. He’s facing multiple  charges, including aggravated murder in connection with the Akron killing.

Two alleged dog killers — one in Florida who used a knife, and one in California who opted for hanging — both blamed their acts on curiosity, police say.

On Sunday night, a Jacksonville, Florida, woman allegedly attacked her family’s dog with a butcher knife, later explaining to officers that she wanted to “know what it felt like.”

Two nights earlier, in California, a 12-year-old boy told police he’d hung the family dog because he wanted to see it die.

Let’s be clear. That’s not curiosity. That’s psychotic behavior, and if convicted they both should get to know what prison feels like, for a long time.

News 4 in Jacksonville reported that 22-year-old Mariessa Caggiano stabbed the family’s 10-year old Labrador retriever seven times with an 8-inch knife.

Authorities said Caggiano stabbed the dog once in the family driveway, and that the dog ran off with the knife still in her. Caggiano chased the dog into a neighbor’s yard and stabbed it about six more times, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.

The dog, still alive when authorities arrived, was rushed to a veterinary hospital, but was not expected to live.

Officers said Caggiano admitted to stabbing the dog because she w”anted to see what it felt like.” She was arrested and charged with cruelty to animals.

In Salinas, California, a 12-year-old boy was placed in juvenile hall after allegedly hanging a dog because, he reportedly told officers, he wanted to see the animal die.

The boy, not named, was booked Friday into Monterey County Juvenile Hall on felony animal-cruelty charges, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Police said they were called to an apartment by a woman who sounded as if she was struggling with someone and yelled, “He’s hurting the dog.” When they arrived, they found the 12-pound terrier-mix dead, hanging by its collar on a bedroom door handle.

The boy came out of the bedroom showing no remorse, police said, and told officers, “I was mad at the dog so I killed it.”

(Photo: Mariessa Caggiano, courtesy of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office)

Twenty-two-year-old Alex Wullaert, accused of choking his dog to death when it misbehaved, arrived for a court hearing in New Haven yesterday amid shouts of “coward” and “murderer.”

Wullaert, of Branford, Conn., was arraigned in New Haven Superior Court on animal cruelty and littering charges and released when he promised to appear in court for his next hearing, June 5.

He was arrested last Monday after a microchip found inside the body of a pit bull-boxer mix named Desmond identified him as the owner.

Authorities say Wullaert confessed to strangling Desmond at his home after the dog urinated on his leg and bit him. Wuallert said he put the dog in a plastic garbage bag and disposed of it in a lake.

Later, feeling regret about what he’d done, he went back to the lake and threw flowers into it, according to court documents.

Wullaert adopted Desmond from a shelter soon after his former girlfriend gave the dog up, WTNH reported. Some volunteers from the shelter were among the crowd calling him names when he arrived for his court appearance yesterday.

Supporters of Desmond, who want to see Wullaert get the maximum penalty, have set up a “Justice for Desmond” Facebook page.

Accused dog killer Andrew David Thompson — charged with choking, throwing, beating, kicking and killing 13 Italian greyhounds — was released from the Ingham County Jail yesterday after his bail was lowered to $50,000.

He was released after $5,000 was posted on his behalf.

As a condition of his release, Thompson will wear a monitor that will track his location and will have to adhere to a curfew, staying home between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

He plans to live with friends in an apartment in Okemos, the State News reported.

Thompson, who was suspended from Michigan State University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine after he was charged, had been detained for more than three months.

Thompson is from Arizona, where his family resides.

After Thompson’s bail was reduced last month, the director of Ingham County Animal Control expressed concerns about his release. Jamie McAloon Lampman said he could be a danger both to animals and witnesses who testified against him, as well as a flight risk.

“This guy has more than one red flag,” she said.

(For previous coverage of this case, go here.)

(Photo: State News)

Andrew David Thompson, the Michigan State University student accused of slaying 13 Italian greyhounds, told investigators he killed them “out of anger,” according to court transcripts obtained by the Lansing State Journal.

The 24-year-old osteopathic medicine student, since suspended by the university, said he killed the dogs by throwing them to the ground or against a wall and by grabbing them by the neck and beating them.

“He (said) that he has killed every single one of these dogs except for two,” Ingham County Animal Control Deputy Jodi LeBombard testified at a June 24 hearing in 55th District Court that led to charges.

Thompson is charged with killing 13 dogs since September 2010.

Typically, he’d put a deceased dog in a garbage bag, along with its clothes, collars and other items, LeBombard testified. “He would cry all the way to the Dumpster, and throw it in the Dumpster,” she said.

Thompson faces 10 felony counts of animal killing in 55th District Court in Mason and three additional counts of animal killing in East Lansing’s 54B District Court. The charges are punishable by up to four years in prison.

He is being held at the Ingham County Jail on a $500,000 bond in the East Lansing case and a $100,000 bond in the Mason case.

Thompson faces an additional count of animal neglect because at least one of the dogs survived.

Officials didn’t say where Thompson bought the Italian greyhounds, a small and delicate breed that typically weighs 7 to 14 pounds.

According to the transcripts, Thompson was seeing a psychiatrist, who expressed concern that Thompson might be a suicide risk.

On his Facebook page, Thompson, who has 790 “friends,” says he attended Phoenix Christian High School in Arizona, then the University of Southern California, where his major was biochemistry. He lists his favorite book as The Bible and his interests as snowboarding and reading The Economist.

The investigation began on June 14, when animal control officials received an anonymous complaint that Thompson had been seen with numerous dogs that kept disappearing.

Several days later, investigators searched Thompson’s Okemos apartment and found a severely injured puppy in the closet.

Authorities also found evidence Thompson bought the dogs from outside Michigan and had them transported via airplane in carriers. Thompson previously lived in Goodyear, Ariz.

In a June 22 interview, Thompson told LeBombard he killed the dogs out of frustration or anger, often sparked when they defecated on his floor, urinated in his bed or wouldn’t come to him when he called them.

“And he got frustrated they didn’t want to stay with him,” LeBombard said, according to transcripts. “And that made him upset.”

His own dog’s DNA helped convict a reputed gang member in south London of the murder of a 16-year-old.

Oluwaseyi Ogunyemi was killed in a “vicious” attack by a gang of youths who set upon him and his friends with their dogs. One of the dogs,  a Staffordshire bull terrier-bull mastiff cross called Tyson, brought Ogunyemi down as he tried to climb over a fence, after which the youth was stabbed six times by its owner Chrisdian Johnson.

Johnson was arrested as he fled the scene of the murder last April, bare-chested and covered in blood.

New DNA technology proved by a billion-to-one probability that some of the blood on Johnson came from his dog Tyson, who had been knifed during the fighting. The rest came from Ogunyemi.

Johnson was also found guilty of the attempted murder of Seyi’s 17-year-old friend Hurui Hiyabum, whom he stabbed nine times.

Scientists used DNA profiling to prove that samples collected during the investigation were a billion times more likely to come from two specific dogs involved in the attack than any other animals, the BBC reported.

Police  hailed the dog DNA technology, which had just been developed at the time of the murder, as a “hugely powerful investigative tool”.

New York City police investigating the fatal stabbing of a nine-year-old came across an unrelated crime — a small dog being repeatedly kicked in an elevator at the Grant Houses.

The assault showed up on surveillance cameras being monitored by police, leading them to arrest Chris Grant, the Manhattan man seen in the video.

Grant, 21, is seen in the footage dragging a friend’s 12-pound Pomeranian-Chihuahua mix, named Chuvi-Duvi, into the Grant Houses elevator. He kicks the dog, pets it, then kicks it again.

On his way back up the elevator, after a trip to a nearby deli, the same scene plays out again.

Police say Chuvi-Duvi didn’t suffer any broken bones in last Saturday’s attack and is recovering at Bergh Memorial Animal Hospital.

Officers from the police department’s Viper unit watched the attack from a remote location and arrested Grant two days later.

“I’m not trusting nobody with my dog,” said the pup’s owner, Melvin Rodriguez, 22, who picked the pooch up from the ASPCA.

The squad started tracking down Grant just an hour after they helped make an arrest in the fatal stabbing of 9-year-old Anthony Maldonado in the same Morningside Heights complex.

The Viper squad is responsible for monitoring surveillance cameras in city housing projects.

The body of the Pacific Northwest’s most famous dog trainer still hasn’t been found, but authorities have charged his ex-wife’s boyfriend with his murder.

T. Mark Stover was the Seattle area’s dog-trainer-to-the-stars, with clients that ranged from members of Pearl Jam and Nirvana to  Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz to Seattle Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki, who entrusted Stover with his Shiba Inu.

Last month, employees at the kennel, Island Dog Adventures, 55 miles north of Seattle, found Stover’s dog, Dingo, shot in the face, but authorities could find no signs of Stover, other than smears of his blood in a downstairs bedroom and hallway.

Prosecutors have charged his ex-wife’s boyfriend,  Michiel Oakes, with murder, according to an Associated Press report.

Stover, 57, and ex-wife Linda Opdycke, 45, opened Island Dog Adventures in the early 1990s on an island owned by her wealthy family. Her father was one of the founders of Washington’s biggest winery, Chateau Ste. Michelle.

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A California  man with a  history of violence was sentenced Friday to more than 25 years in prison for beating his former girlfriend’s cocker spaniel to death with a hammer.

The conviction was a third strike for Alex Castro, leading in part to the lengthy sentence, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

Castro, 48, of Milpitas, said the sentence was too much for killing a dog — and that he should get no more than the maximum three-year sentence for animal cruelty. The judge said he could not ignore the violence Castro inflicted in his life, according to the prosecutor.

“I am appreciative that not only did a jury take this case incredibly seriously, as evidenced by their verdict, but also that the judge did,” said Deputy District Attorney Kevin Smith. “Despite the defendant’s claims he was getting too much time for ‘only killing a dog,’ he is getting this sentence for the violence in his past.”

A drywall worker, Castro was sentenced to 25 years to life for the 2007 dog killing, but with enhancements to his sentence, the earliest he’d be eligible for parole is 33 years, Smith said.

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A Chicago man is accused of killing the landlord who told him he couldn’t have a dog, using garden tools, an ice scraper, a BB gun and a pipe to allegedly beat him before setting his body on fire.

Martin Vega, 27, is charged with first-degree murder and could face the death penalty, Cook County prosecutors said.

A judge denied bail for Vega, who was renting an apartment from William Hallin, 67, in the two-story home Hallin owned in Chicago’s Gage Park community, according to the Chicago Tribune.

On Friday, Hallin went to collect rent and saw Vega had a dog in his apartment. When Hallin told Vega he would have to move out, a bloody fight ensued, officials said.