Man That Kicked Chihuahua to Death Set Free

This is just sickening. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

A man has pleaded no contest to charges that he kicked his girlfriend's Chihuahua to death after it soiled their bed in Redwood City.

Ariel Aspedilla, 26, of Manteca entered his no-contest plea to a felony animal cruelty charge on Monday in San Mateo County Superior Court. Judge Clifford Cretan sentenced him to nine months in jail and allowed Aspedilla to be released because of credit for time served.

Aspedilla was arrested March 13 after Chiquita, a 4-year-old female, died at an animal hospital, prosecutors said.

Aspedilla spent the night of March 6 with his girlfriend at her apartment and awoke to find that Chiquita had defecated and urinated on the bed, prosecutors said. Enraged, he kicked the dog four or five times, said Steve Wagstaffe, chief deputy district attorney.

Chiquita suffered five broken ribs, punctured lungs and a damaged liver and lost a significant amount of blood, authorities said. Aspedilla and his girlfriend brought the dog to Sequoia Veterinary Hospital in Redwood City, where a doctor tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate it, said Eva Fillyaw, a manager at the clinic.

Aspedilla was consoling his weeping girlfriend and appeared eager to accept the doctor's initial diagnosis that Chiquita might have an immune-system problem that was causing blood loss, Fillyaw said.

But a necropsy revealed the broken ribs as well as previous signs of abuse, Fillyaw said.