Severed head of puppy left on mum's bed

nlnews@archant.co.uk
21 March 2007

SHOCKED mum Sharon Kingsland with the blood of killed puppy Esko still clearly visable on her bed

A YOUNG mum is living in fear after she found her puppy beheaded on her bed in a Godfather-style attack.

Sharon Kingsland says she got back home to find the corpse of "big softie" Esko, lying on her blood-stained bed - with the only Valentine's Card her former boyfriend had ever sent her lying with it.

It is believed Esko was beaten to death with a pickaxe, and a post mortem carried out by the RSPCA is believed to have shown that the dog suffered terribly during the killing.

Sharon is in hiding with the couple's two-year-old daughter Tamika following the attack.

Police say they want to speak to her former boyfriend, who is on police bail following allegations of domestic violence, in connection with the dog's death. The RSPCA has also assigned a top-ranking officer to the case.

Sharon said: "If I had been in the house on Saturday it would have been me lying there and not the dog. I'm sure of that.

"It was like something out of the Godfather."

Sharon, 21, says she received death threats before the dog's killing.

She later returned home to her flat in Cherry Tree Close, Lower Edmonton, to find Esko dead.

She said: "I couldn't hear Esko behind the door. I saw somebody had kicked the door in and I was afraid they would still be in there so I called the police and stayed outside.

"They were there in two minutes and when they told me Esko was dead I collapsed in shock on the pavement. I broke into pieces."

Officers took Sharon to the police station and the next day she returned to the house where Esko's body remained.

She said: "I thought I knew what I was going into but the way I saw him, there was no way to describe it.

"There was blood on the ceiling of my daughter's room and part of Esko's brain was on Tamika's bedroom floor. I vomited at the sight of it and that was just the blood.

"Then I went into my bedroom where the dog had been put it on my bed. I will never get the picture out of my mind of Esko lying there. Half of his head had been smashed in with a pickaxe that was lying in the flat but the other half of his head was untouched.

"I wanted to pick him up and will him back to life.

"The flat was smashed up, the toilet blocked and the bath left running with the plug in so the whole place was flooded. Everything has been ruined. I had just bought new washing machine, new sofas and new clothes, but it's all gone and it wasn't insured.

"I couldn't tell Tamika that Esko was dead so I told her he went to sleep and she thinks he's still sleeping.

"I can't bear to think that he probably ran up to the killer when he saw him. Esko was such a big softie and he wouldn't hurt a fly. Tamika was always playing with him, pulling his tail and treading on him, but he didn't mind. They were best friends."

A spokesman for the RSPCA said: "This was an absolutely horrific attack on this poor dog and the dog will have suffered considerably before its death. It would have been in a tremendous amount of pain.

"We are working very closely with Enfield police on this and we are trying to catch who ever did this as quickly as we can.