Horrific attack on dogs stuns couple
Flatmate arrested after one of couple’s animals killed and the other wounded
An Auckland couple are distraught after their 10-month-old puppy’s throat was slashed. Jack Vanbiljon watched the moment his staffy-cross-kelpie named Turbo died in a pool of blood on Monday in West Auckland.
He and girlfriend Casey Halpin’s other dog, Nova, a 3-year-old bull terrier, also had its throat slashed but survived.
“I lost my best friend,” Vanbiljon said.
Police have charged a 39-yearold man at the address in Dairy Flat with possessing an offensive weapon, and he will appear in North Shore District Court today.
Vanbiljon, 22, a landscaper, had been subletting a room on Dairy Flat Rd with Halpin, also 22, when he says their flatmate asked them to leave without warning.
“Me, my girlfriend and the dogs were at home when [my flatmate] and two friends burst into my room, saying, ‘You have 10 minutes to get out of the house.’
“We had no warning, nothing. He just burst into my room and began kicking my stuff around.”
The couple started to take belongings out to the car, when Vanbiljon heard Halpin scream.
“She went out and I heard her scream, so I just dropped everything . . . ran outside.”
Halpin said she saw the flatmate standing facing her car with a knife behind his back, slick with blood.
Halpin ran towards the car. Inside, Turbo the dog was still alive jumping from the front seat to the back seat.
Vanbiljon joined her at the car and they realised Turbo was bleeding.
“He’d basically bled out in my car,” Halpin said.
Halpin said she opened the door and Turbo jumped out, towards Vanbiljon. But the dog then fell into a puddle of blood and stopped moving.
Vanbiljon said he had been unable to get the image out of his head of Turbo in the car with his neck open, looking at him and wagging his tail as he took his last breaths. “I am distraught. I don’t know what to do. He came to work with me every day, did everything with me, 24/7. “When I wake up in the morning he not being there is the hardest thing.” Halpin and Vanbiljon got in the car and went with their injured dog Nova to the nearest police station. Covered in blood, Halpin said they went into the station looking as if they had been at their own crime scene. Her parents met them and took Nova straight to the vet, where the dog received eight staples to seal a neck wound. “The vet said Nova’s cut was only 8mm from the jugular,” Vanbiljon said. Shortly after they made their statements, police went to the Dairy Flat address and collected Turbo’s body. A police spokeswoman said the SPCA was investigating. A spokeswoman from the SPCA confirmed the organisation had begun an animal welfare investigation, but she could make no further comment while this investigation was active.
Vanbiljon had to leave a previous flat with short notice and he and Halpin found the new place on a Facebook page, and were keen to move in mainly because the property allowed dogs.
They had been there about six months.
“When we moved in the flatmate went to Australia,” Vanbiljon said. “When he came back we thought he was not too bad. Never raised any questions for us.”
Vanbiljon said the pair were waiting on the results of a post mortem examination by police.
But nothing would change the fact that Turbo, Vanbiljon’s constant companion, was gone.
“Waking up in the morning now, he’s not there jumping up on the side of my bed with his two paws and his big smile looking at me like ‘yo dad, let’s wake up’.”
The couple are staying with Halpin’s parents and said they were cautious about entering into another flatting situation.