Christopher Reed
A Casper man who killed his roommate’s guinea pig and cut her dog’s throat will serve 18 to 24 months in prison, a judge decided Tuesday.
“That simply cannot occur in this society,” Natrona County District Judge Kerri Johnson said while delivering the sentence in a Casper courtroom.
Christopher Reed, 23, was found guilty of two counts of aggravated cruelty to animals, one for each pet. He is required to turn himself in to the Natrona County Detention Center by 5 p.m. Tuesday. Reed is set to serve his sentence in the Wyoming State Penitentiary.
His lawyer, public defender Marty Scott, asked for probation instead of a prison sentence, but Johnson refused, citing Reed’s history of violating probation as a teenager.
Police responded to a report of a fight on Halloween night in 2019 to find an apartment “in complete disarray,” according to the affidavit. Witnesses told officers they had heard screaming and a male voice threatening to slit someone’s throat. When they entered the apartment, police found the guinea pig dead with a broken neck and a dog collar in a pool of blood.
Reed testified that the border collie had tried to attack him and he stabbed it. He then tried to kill it to end its suffering by slitting its throat, severing its trachea but not killing it according to veterinarians who later treated the dog. According to the report, the dog was found alive and wrapped in a garbage bag in a dumpster outside the apartment. Reed later told police he thought the dog was dead.
