HELL HOUND!
Monster tortured neighbors’ beloved dogs
SADISTIC David C. Herbert has been convicted of torturing his neighbors’ dogs — including digging out the eye of a Siberian husky!
Jurors also found Herbert, 37, abused another neighbor’s dog, a golden retriever named Lala — and cops claim the monster did an online search for “how to get a dog to drink antifreeze,” which is toxic to canines.
During his trial, the California man admitted he bought ethylene glycol — a compound in antifreeze — and left it lying around his property.
Herbert, a former Navy sailor, claims he did nothing wrong. He insists Lala “jumped into his car” and he was about to take her to a shelter when she bolted away.
Police discovered a small amount of blood in his car and on a baseball bat he owned. Herbert denied hitting Lala with a bat. But the poor pooch has yet to be found.
“I’ll never have Lala back, but [Herbert] won’t hurt another pet,” Lala’s owner, Michelle Plaketta, said after the brute was convicted on six felony animal cruelty charges.
The jury also convicted Herbert for burglary and four misdemeanor counts, which include slashing tires on vehicles belonging to the same neighbors who had their dog’s eye gouged.
Herbert, who’d been free after posting $1 million bail after his arrest last year, represented himself at trial.
Authorities ordered the freak jailed with no bail, finding that he presented “a clear and present danger” to the public.
Cops said Herbert targeted a family living next door to him in north Oceanside, burning their two dogs with caustic chemicals and slashing the tires on the family’s vehicles in 2017.
Maria Morales testified she came home one day in April 2017 to find someone had broken in and gouged out an eye of their pet husky, named Estrella.
The family moved out of their rental home shortly thereafter.
A month later, a new family with two dogs moved in — and within two days, nineyear-old Lala disappeared.
“This man is in jail right now, so I am happy for my family,” Morales says.