A Fresh Meadows man threw his dog to her death last week after getting into a fight with his ex-girlfriend in Flushing over who would take care of the pooch, prosecutors said on Thursday.
Yuk Cheung, 35, of Parsons Boulevard faces a charge of aggravated cruelty to animals for allegedly throwing the 12-year-old female pug off the balcony of his ex-girlfriend’s seventh-floor apartment on 40th Road near Prince Street in Flushing on March 17. Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown said the pug fell 70 feet to the street below.
“Such acts of aggression toward defenseless animals cannot — and will not — be tolerated in Queens County,” Brown said in a statement on March 23.
According to the charges, Cheung went to his former girlfriend’s home on March 17; he had previously moved out of the apartment and left the pug in her care. Cheung and his ex then got into a verbal dispute at about 7:30 p.m. over who would take care of the canine.
Prosecutors said Cheung’s former girlfriend told him to find a place that would allow him to keep his pet. Cheung allegedly responded that she “would not have to worry about the dog anymore.”
Then, law enforcement sources said, Cheung picked up the pug and walked to the apartment balcony. He returned moments later without the pet and claimed that the dog had slipped off the balcony.
According to Brown, Cheung allegedly went down to the street, picked up the dog’s body, placed her in a box of ice and dumped the remains in a nearby garbage can.
Prosecutors said he would later change his story when speaking with detectives, claiming that he tripped, and the dog leaped out of his arms and went through the balcony’s metal railing. Police later disproved that claim, noting that the dog would have to have been hurled about 40 feet into the air in order to have cleared the balcony and hit the street below, about six feet from the edge of the sidewalk.
Detective Dennis Steele of the NYPD Animal Cruelty Investigation Squad subsequently took Cheung into custody on March 21. The defendant was ordered held on $10,000 bail and to return to court on April 4. He faces up to two years behind bars if convicted.
