A 27-year-old Baltimore city police officer is in custody on animal cruelty charges after he told police he beat his 7-month-old puppy to death. ABC7 has confirmed that Alec Eugene Taylor is a Baltimore City police officer. He’s been with force for five years.
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Taylor, of the 13800 block of Castle Boulevard in Silver Spring, confessed to Montgomery County Police that he beat the Jack Russel Terrier because he was tired of the dog defecating on the carpet. He shared the dog, named “Rocko,” with his girlfriend.
On Feb. 28 at around 11:10 a.m., Montgomery County Police were called to the home on Castle Boulevard by Taylor’s girlfriend, who told officers he had beaten and killed Rocko.
An investigation revealed that on Feb. 26 around 4:30 p.m., Taylor’s girlfriend received a text message from him stating that Rocko had defecated on the carpet, and that Taylor had subsequently killed the puppy.
According to police, Taylor also texted a photo to her that appeared to be of a “lifeless” Rocko.
The two then spoke by phone, when Taylor reportedly told his girlfriend that he was tired of cleaning up the dog’s feces, and that he had beaten Rocko with a mop. He said he had placed the dog’s dead body in a dumpster in the parking lot.
Police said Taylor’s girlfriend asked him if he would retrieve Rocko’s body from the dumpster so that she could bury him. Around 6:30 that evening, she returned home and found the dog’s body in a shoebox on the balcony of their apartment. She took it to a park in nearby Hyattsville and buried Rocko.
After the girlfriend reported this to police, Animal Services officers located and recovered Rocko’s body from the park, and performed a necropsy.
The necropsy results determined the dog’s cause of death was “acute hemorrhagic shock,” likely due to blood loss from liver damage caused by blunt force trauma shortly before death.
Police said they interviewed Taylor, who told them he had used a mop to force Rocko out from behind the dryer, and then used his hands to choke Rocko to death.
Animal Services Officers obtained a warrant for Taylor’s arrest Tuesday evening, but that Taylor turned himself into officers on Wednesday. Taylor was transported to jail, where he is being charged with aggravated animal cruelty, which is a felony, and abuse or neglect of an animal.
