FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Police arrested a Fort Lauderdale woman Saturday after they said she beat her dog to death in late August.
A witness found the decomposing body of Snowball, a “small mixed poodle breed,” in the trash on Sept. 1.
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According to police, that witness lives with the 30-year-old suspect, Shacoria Pulliam, in the 600 block of Northwest 13th Terrace in the city’s Durrs neighborhood.
He told police that on Aug. 28, he saw an “agitated” Pulliam yelling and screaming at the family dog and later punching her in the head and body, an arrest report states, causing the small dog to “yelp as if she was in pain.”
Police said he stepped in to stop the attack and put Snowball in her crate.
But, the report states, later that night, he saw Pulliam beating Snowball with a frying pan as the dog yelped in pain. She then kicked the dog out of the front door, police said.
Other witnesses reported seeing Pulliam, whom they described as a “heavy drug user,” beating Snowball.
Police said Aug. 28 would be the last time anyone saw Snowball alive.
On Sept. 1, Pulliam’s housemate discovered her decomposed body in a trash can along the side of the apartment. A necropsy determined Snowball died of blunt force trauma.
The report doesn’t state why no one called police until after Snowball was found dead.
Pulliam was being held in Broward County’s Paul Rein Detention Facility on a $25,000 bond for a felony charge of animal cruelty causing death, according to jail records.