This alert is no longer active, but here for reference. Animals still need your help.

A Texas judge appallingly handed a violent killer only five years of probation for beating to death his girlfriend's family's tiny dog, Ruger. Tell this judge that his ruling was not only shameful but that it did not even meet the penalty that state law mandates.

On December 5, 2022, Judge Frank J. Castro decided on Michael Ruperto Uriegas' punishment for beating his girlfriend's tiny one-year-old dog Ruger to death, and yet didn't give him any punishment to speak of! He handed this violent man only five years of probation, nothing else. In Texas, this third-degree felony carries a penalty of up to a $10,000 fine and not more than ten years or less than two years of jail.

In Defense of Animals had sent Bexar County District Attorney Joe D. Gonzales a letter with 17,800 In Defense of Animals supporter signatures to be presented in the sentencing phase of the trial. It's disgraceful that Judge Castro ignored your voices for justice as well as Texas law, letting a man with no control of his temper off with no regard for the safety of his family. friends, or anyone he might have a conflict with.

On April 11, 2022, the Bexar County Sheriff's Department arrested Uriegas and charged him with cruelty to a non-livestock animal. According to an affidavit supporting Uriegas' arrest, Bexar County Sheriff's investigators learned that Uriegas beat Ruger for urinating on him while taking him out of his kennel on March 16, 2022, at his home. Uriegas claimed only that he “just lost his cool” and threw Ruger back in his kennel. He said he freaked out and tried resuscitating Ruger because he was “breathing weird.”

However, the criminal affidavit read that a necropsy was performed by Bexar County Animal Control, which revealed that Ruger was intentionally beaten so severely before he died that he suffered multiple fractures of his skull and legs by blunt force trauma in addition to other contusions on his testicles, thighs, chest, abdomen, ears, neck, and face.

It is time for judges to realize the propensity of abusers to continue harming anyone who causes them to “lose their cool” and to give jail sentences to violent abusers.

This alert is no longer active, but here for reference. Animals still need your help.