Last August Frank Coppola of Staten Island beat his girlfriend's chihuahua to death. A necropsy performed on the three-year-old dog, named Bella, showed severe trauma to its chest, internal bleeding, several broken ribs, a ruptured jugular vein and bruised lungs. Coppola beat the animal while his girlfriend, Melissa DePietro, was out, then called her to say there was "a problem with the dog." DePietro rushed home and took Bella—who had hemorrhaging in her eyes and blood coming from her mouth—to an animal hospital, where she was declared dead. Today, Coppola got a slap on the wrist.
After pleading guilty to a misdemeanor animal cruelty charge, Coppola was sentenced to weekends in jail for three months and perform 100 hours of community service, reports the Staten Island Advance. (He'll likely be assigned to animal-related service.) Coppola, who had originally claimed that Bella "ran into a wall," faced up to two years in prison had he been convicted at trial of the felony charge. "It’s very rare for animal cruelty cases to result in jail time, but we believe this case deserved some period of incarceration," said a spokesman for District Attorney Daniel Donovan, who deemed the deal "appropriate."
