Crown wants up to six months in jail for Whitlock

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Crown is recommending a four to six month jail sentence for the owner of Captain, the German Shepherd that was found badly beaten and left to die in a dumpster in Kitsilano last year.

Brian Whitlock, 26, pleaded guilty to animal cruelty last month.

In court today, Crown says Whitlock has claimed he’d grown scared of the dog, who he says had started acting aggressively after eating something strange. Crown says Whitlock struck Captain with a bat three times and discarded the dog.

Mental illness is being used as a defence in the case. Crown is recommending four to six months in jail as well as a lifetime pet ban.

Defence has asked for no time in custody, and says Whitlock is a young man struggling to come to grips with mental illness.

The maximum sentence Whitlock can be given is five years in prison, a lifetime ban on owning animals, and a stiff fine.

Judges have been reluctant to hand out sentences that harsh in similar cases in the past, but animal rights campaigner Kat Chapman hopes that changes today.

“We have had enough and, as sad as it is, we think Captain is the game changer,” Chapman tells us. “I want to see the max. Five years. That’s all there is.”

“It’s really sad that there has to be a victim to change things. There are people like me and others who will spread the word and do petitions and do whatever we have to do to change things.”

Captain was whimpering and wrapped in a bloody sheet when he was found last July. He died the next day.

“He was beaten so badly that he would have been a quadriplegic if he survived,” says Chapman. “The stuff that I heard when I sat there in the courtroom was shocking. It’s just really sad.”.

Dozens of people attended a rally in Captain’s memory in Kitsilano over the weekend.