New York City lawyer Anthony A. Pastor was disbarred for violently killing his girlfriend’s poodle “Snoopy.” See Matter of Pastor, 2017 NY Slip Op 06729, (App. Div. 1st Dept. Sep. 28, 2017).
The New York Post reported his girlfriend’s trial testimony as follows: “’I looked down and there was Snoopy — stiff, not moving — her eyes were sunken into her head, and there were feces behind her, then I went closer, and I touched her and she was cold and hard,” she said. An animal autopsy revealed that the little pooch, who [the girlfriend] described as a ‘ball of fluffy cuteness,’ had nine broken ribs, a pulverized kidney and massive internal bleeding.”
In disbarring Pastor, the court noted the sentencing judge’s comments that the respondent’s conduct “‘showed almost incomprehensible violence, and malice,’ that the dog was in ‘excruciating pain’ up until she lost consciousness while respondent ‘sat down at his computer in the most cold blooded manner, and went to work, knowing that the dog lay dying, . . . on the floor behind him.'”
This case is chillingly reminiscent of the 1993 Maryland case in which a lawyer was suspended for microwaving a cat.
