Decarlos Jones Gets 90 Days for Beheading 6-Month-Old Puppy

Puppy love, this was not.

Every couple has its spats, but most navigate their rocky patches with screaming, shouting, maybe storming out of the house or the stereotypical broken dish or two. The usual melodrama.

Not so 29-year-old Decarlos Jones. He told detectives that on September 19, 2017, he decided to get even with his girlfriend by taking her 6-month-old puppy into the bathtub, smacking it against the tub repeatedly, and stabbing it to death

Then, he cut the puppy’s head off.

Then, he carefully placed it on a table.

It was a warning to his girlfriend: Don’t let your puppy pee on the floor. That’s what set Jones off in the first place, he later confessed.

Thursday, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge sentenced him to 90 days in jail and three years of probation. Jones pled guilty to the felony animal cruelty charge in November.

The state has laws for this kind of behavior when it happens to kids. Police, court, and state child welfare case files are filled with similar stories of abusive dads doing similarly awful things to their kids for similar reasons.

The same laws do not apply to puppies, which sent Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery into a controlled fit of righteous indignation.

“This conviction represents the most serious felony designation that can be imposed, yet it falls far short of acknowledging the intentional conduct committed by the defendant,” Montgomery said in a prepared remark in a press release. “I look forward to changes in our criminal laws that will allow us to meet community expectations in punishing this vicious type of behavior.”

Probably not much argument there, Bill.