By Gabriel Margasak
Originally published in The Stuart News, July 3, 2002
HOBE SOUND — A Hobe Sound man was charged with animal cruelty and domestic violence after he suffocated two puppies and battered his girlfriend, authorities said on Tuesday.
Martin County sheriff's deputies said Justin James Harding, 23, wrapped two, 2-week-old pit-bull mix puppies in wet towels, sealed them in plastic bags and threw them in a closet because they were crying.
His 19-year-old girlfriend told detectives she "pleaded with Justin not to do it, but he said he would do the same to her," a sheriff's report states. "She said that she could hear the puppies whimpering and the bag moving as they gasped for air until they were dead."
She was afraid to call for help, detectives said.
Deputies seized 12 other puppies and their mother from the couple's mobile home and turned them over to the Humane Society of the Treasure Coast.
Harding told a deputy he suffocated the puppies "because they were crying all the time and making too much noise, as if there was nothing wrong with it because they were his puppies," a sheriff's report says.
In court papers released on Tuesday, detectives allege Harding subjected his girlfriend to violent treatment.
Deputies said the girl went to Martin Memorial Hospital South on June 30 vomiting blood. At the hospital, she told a nurse her live-in boyfriend of four years had killed the puppies and shoved her in front of her children, deputies stated. The hospital called authorities.
Deputies' reports state that Harding did not allow his girlfriend to use the phone and had "brainwashed her into believing if she is bad, she deserves to be beaten," the report stated.
She told a deputy that Harding had suffocated the two puppies, one June 27 and one June 28.
Harding was being held Tuesday evening at the Martin County Jail without bail.
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