Man gets two years in prison, becomes known (by me) as worst person ever

I don’t remember hearing about this when it happened (and a search of ajc.com didn’t yield any results), but District Attorney Paul Howard’s office sent out a release this evening announcing the conviction by guilty plea of a 68-year-old Atlanta man who allowed — or, rather, instructed — his two pit bulls to maul two puppies in a neighbor’s yard.

From the release:
The case stems from a May 29, 2010 incident on Spring Garden Drive in southwest Atlanta. The obviously intoxicated Wayde Clark was walking with his two pit bulldogs when he unlocked the gate to a neighbor’s home. He removed the cinder block and Herbie Curbie the owner had used to secure his property and put his dogs into the neighbor’s yard. The pit bulls attacked the two puppies in the yard, a Labrador mix and an 8-month-old Shepherd. The 22-pound Shepherd mix, named Crackerjack, was killed.

When a neighbor intervened and attempted to stop the mauling of Crackerjack, the defendant commanded one of his dogs to attack her. She made it safely back to her home and called 911. Fulton County Animal Control officers took custody of the pit bulls. One was deemed dangerous and euthanized.

A jury was selected for Clark’s trial yesterday, but he went ahead and pleaded guilty today to aggravated cruelty to animals, aggravated assault, criminal trespass and public drunkenness. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but will serve only two. He’ll be on probation for the remainder of his sentence. Hopefully a condition of his probation is not owning/being around/looking at dogs.