Peter Kevin Kelliher facing jail term over poisoning neighbour’s dog with lead and glass-filled sausages
A MAN used lead and glass-filled sausages during a “vile and vicious” campaign against a neighbour’s dog, Mia the golden retriever. He now faces jail. WARNING: Confronting footage
SHE was a loving family pet who had become an integral part of the Fabian family.
But Mia, a two-year-old golden retriever, is now battling devastating health effects after her owner’s Adelaide Hills neighbour whipped her and fed her sausages laced with iron and glass shards.
Peter Kevin Kelliher, 64, is facing jail after admitting causing serious harm to the animal because he was lonely and stressed about the dog’s barking.
Despite his guilty pleas to 14 “vile” animal cruelty charges, he asked a magistrate to suspend any inevitable prison term or allow him to serve it on home detention.
The Mt Barker Magistrates Court was on Thursday told how former mine worker Kelliher, a grandfather, entered the Fabians’ 3000sq m Strathalbyn property on March 16 last year armed with a stock whip.
He then chased the animal, which the family had bought in the wake of a family death, before striking it in the legs with the whip.
He was warned by police about his behaviour but then embarked on his poison campaign over the next six months.
Prosecutors revealed how he had shaved filings from old fishing weights and added broken glass to the cooked sausages before placing them over his neighbour’s fence.
He was caught after the family became concerned at the animal’s sudden and unexplained bouts of illness, forcing them to act on police advice and install security cameras.
In an emotional victim statement tendered to the court, Mia’s owner and mother-of-five Heidi Fabian, 45, laid bare her family’s trauma.
“I have found it hard to put into words together to concisely articulate the mixed and debilitating emotions that, I, we, our family each experience,” she wrote.
“Mia is an individual to each of us holding unique and personal relationships exclusively.
“I was physically ill (when she saw him with the sausages) and still today cannot fully grasp the viciousness and malice that lives within you to do such a vile thing. You are so fundamentally evil.”
She wept in court as harrowing details were aired about the dog’s injuries — she still receives ongoing treatment today — including lead poisoning and internal bleeding.
The family was due to sell puppies from a proposed litter but the dog was too sick to fall pregnant. Kelliher has agreed to pay almost $12,150 compensation.
RSPCA prosecutor Ronan O’Brien called for an immediate prison term for the crimes, which he said were among the more serious the animal welfare watchdog had witnessed.
Chloe Kourakis, defending, said her client accepted a jail term was inevitable and was now homeless after selling his home. He would serve any home detention prison term with his former wife.
Magistrate Brian Nitschke ordered home detention reports but added: “I make it abundantly clear I have no doubt whatsoever a jail term should be imposed in this matter.”
Outside court, Mrs Fabian’s husband Jacques, 57, said the court process had been “very tough” on the family.
Kelliher refused comment outside court. He will be sentenced next month.