- April 23, 2024
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UPDATE: John Vincent Benning pleaded no contest to misdemeanor animal cruelty, false reporting of a crime and misuse of 911. Judge Melissa Distler on March 3, 2023, sentenced him to 12 months of probation and enrollment in an 8-hour anger management course for the animal cruelty charge and time served for the other charges, but he violated probation with another false report of a crime, pleaded no contest to the probation violation charge and was sentenced on May 11, 2023, to 60 days at the county jail, according to court records.
ORIGINAL STORY:
A Bunnell man was arrested on Saturday, Jan. 7 after allegedly hitting a dog with a landscaping paver.
The Flagler County Sheriff's Office was called out to a home on the 6600 block of Tangerine Avenue in Bunnell on Saturday afternoon. A woman at the home called deputies after a man, John Vincent Benning, 56, threw the stone at the dog, according to the arrest report.
The two adults and the woman's son were sitting on the house's porch when one of their dogs, a 10-month-old German Shepherd, picked up an old ball in the yard and began to play with it, the report said. The woman told the deputy that Benning "became angered" by that, yelling and screaming at the dog.
She said Benning stepped off the porch, picked up the paver and threw it at the dog, hitting it, the report said. She told the deputy that the German Shepherd was limping when she brought it inside. The woman had Ring camera footage of the incident, the report said, and shared it with the deputy.
In the video, the dog is off screen when Benning throws the stone, the report said, but "the dog is heard whimpering in pain." When the woman confronted Benning about throwing the stone, he can be heard in the video threatening to kill all of the dogs, the report said.
Benning refused to talk to the deputies and was arrested on a felony animal cruelty charge and taken to the county jail, the report said.
He bonded out by 6 p.m. on Jan. 7, but was arrested again by 10 a.m. Sunday, Jan. 8 on two misdemeanor charges of false reporting of a crime and misuse of 911, according to the Flagler County inmate booking site. Benning is currently being held now without bond, according to the site.
