Monday 2 August 2010

Future Darwin Award Candidate?

The owner of a dog that savaged a toddler to death begged magistrates not to ban him from keeping the animals.
Because, hey, the womenfolk can always pop out a few more kids to replace the one his 'pet' savaged to death, right?
Urfan Ahmed said although what had happened to his niece, 18-month-old Zumer, had left him and his family devastated, his “life would be over” if they took his dogs away.
Ouch!

Now, I consider myself pretty callous, but that particular choice of words? Not cool, Urfan, not cool at all...

Luckily, for once, the magistrates showed a tad more common sense:
But his pleas fell on deaf ears and Ahmed, 32, of Cotton Walk, Crawley, was banned from keeping dogs for five years after he pleaded guilty to owning a dangerous dog at a hearing yesterday.
Five years? What, when his ban is up (assuming he obeys it) he's going to say 'No more Dogo Argentinos for me! I'm going to buy a nice chihuahua...'

And why was he not charged with manslaughter?
Prosecutors looked into charging Ahmed with gross negligence manslaughter but decided there was insufficient evidence to justify criminal proceedings.
Oh, really? I fail to see how they came up with that one. Was it a police dog, or something?

So, whaty did he get, for being the owner of one banned breed and one out-of-control killer?
Magistrates fined Ahmed £250 and ordered him to pay £150 costs and a £15 victim surcharge.
*sigh*

8 comments:

Schlumpf23 said...

I don't consider you callous at all; scathing, surgical even, but most certainly not callous.

KenS said...

Urfan Ahmed

Another good old traditional British name

Brian, follower of Deornoth said...

There lies the clue, too. Both to the utter indifference to the death of the niece (a nephew'd be a different matter), and to the utter lack of punishment.

microdave said...

But he claimed his “life would be over” if he was banned from keeping dogs.

I'm sure he can find a satisfactory way of committing suicide within 5 years...

Mark Wadsworth said...

I've always said that, if your dog kills somebody, you ought to be charged with manslaughter at least, or possibly accessory to murder.

English Viking said...

'His life would be over'

Yep, it would have been if I was on the Bench.

JuliaM said...

"...scathing, surgical even, but most certainly not callous."

Why, thank you! ;)

"Another good old traditional British name"

Indeed! And a lot of the comments pick up on that (and the Muslim/dog conundrum) in the article.

"There lies the clue, too. Both to the utter indifference to the death of the niece (a nephew'd be a different matter), and to the utter lack of punishment."

Quite. Contrast this with the case of the Liverpool incident.

Why the discrepancy?

"I'm sure he can find a satisfactory way of committing suicide within 5 years..."

I'm with EV. Why leave it up to him?

"I've always said that, if your dog kills somebody, you ought to be charged with manslaughter at least.."

Agreed.

Dredd, Judge Joseph said...

Nice to see that all is its usual normal self, here on the planet Zorg... Unfortunately, as I remember the 'rules' of the Darwin Award, don't you have to have killed yourself in some spectacular way BEFORE 'contributing' to the gene pool? It is more than likely that this halfwit has sired something or other, so he might not be eligible. Anything created with the assistance of this turdbrain might not be a contribution in the accepted sense, however, certainly not to society, if he has imbued any of his offspring with the same shallow, self-centred values that is.