Charges Filed Against Fort Worth Boy Beating Death of Dog

Fort Worth police say charges against an 10-year-old boy have been file with Tarrant County Juvenile Services in the beating death of a dog earlier this week.

The actual charge is delinquent conduct, animal cruelty-torture which is a state jail felony. Police say Child Protective Services has been notified.

Cookie's owner originally said the boy was 11, but police say he is 10.

"How can you be angry at an 11-year-old?" said the dog's owner, Jennifer Knittel. "But when you're 11, you know the difference between right and wrong."

Knittel is the owner of Cookie, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel mix who was playing in the backyard Monday.

Somehow Cookie, as well as Knittel's other dog – a German Shepherd named Sam – ended up outside of the fence and in front of the house in the 8200 block of Sleeping Doe Drive.

Knittel suspects that the unidentified boy opened the unlocked gate to their yard, lured the animals out and beat Cookie with a large stick from her backyard.

A neighbor reportedly came upon the scene around 4:30 p.m.

"She said that my dogs were hiding under a truck and the boy was kicking at them, trying to get them out from under the truck [parked in the street]" Knittel told NBC 5.

That neighbor circled back minutes later, Knittel said, and said she saw the boy in front of a home across the street. Cookie was lying still on the ground by the front door.

"She stopped the boy and she said, 'Did you hurt that dog?' And he said, 'No, that dog is sleeping,'" Knittel said the witness told.

Knittel said an animal control investigator contacted her late Tuesday to say the results of her dog's necropsy showed Cookie died as a result of a fractured skull and a severed spine, the result of many blows to the body.

A Fort Worth police detective has spoken with the boy, as well as his parents, according to a department spokesperson.

The boy's story is that the dog attacked him and he was defending himself, according to a neighbor who had spoken with the child's parents.

That neighbor told NBC 5 the suspect is a good kid who he trusts to play with his own son.