Retired fire official convicted of felony animal cruelty for puppy attack

RIVERSIDE -- A jury found a retired assistant fire chief guilty of felony animal cruelty today for beating his next-door neighbor's puppy to death with a large rock.

Glynn Damon Johnson, 55, looked down and blinked rapidly as the verdict was read in Riverside Superior Court. He did not speak to reporters as he left the courthouse.

Johnson, who once supervised fire stations in Pomona, Diamond Bar and elsewhere in the San Gabriel Valley, faces up to four years in state prison at sentencing, which is scheduled for March 8.

The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for only about 1 hour and 15 minutes before reaching a verdict.

Prosecutors accused Johnson, of Riverside, of angrily punching his neighbor's puppy in the head and striking it with a 12-pound rock after it wandered into his yard on Nov. 3, 2008.

The attack came after years of increasingly tense disputes between Johnson and the neighboring Toole family on Armintrout Drive about the family's pets and other issues, prosecutors said.

In his trial testimony, Johnson said he hit the dog in self-defense after it attacked him and latched its jaws onto his right thumb, nearly severing it.

Jeff and Shelley Toole held hands in court today as they waited for the verdict to be read. Jeff Toole said, "Yes, yes," as the guilty verdict was announced.

"Animal cruelty too often goes ignored," he said after the hearing. "We weren't going to let this get ignored."

Since it became public, Johnson's case has received a great deal of attention from animal rights activists.

When Johnson was arraigned in January last year, people yelled at him in courtroom hallways and protested outside the courthouse.

Eight sheriff's deputies circled the large courtroom audience today, and Johnson was escorted by deputies as he left the courthouse.

The day Karley was killed, the six- to eight-month-old puppy wandered through Johnson's front yard to a fence that divided Johnson's property from a neighbor's home.

When the dog, a German Shepard mix, reached the fence line, one of Johnson's neighbors took hold of the dog, planning to walk it back to the Tooles' home.

But then Johnson emerged and offered to walk the dog back himself, according to witnesses' trial testimony.

The neighbor, Travis Staggs, testified that after he handed the dog off to Johnson, he saw Johnson punch it several times in an unprovoked attack, then strike it repeatedly with a large decorative rock.

Johnson claimed that the 35-pound dog unexpectedly attacked him after he took its collar, and he struck it until the dog loosened its jaw from his thumb, which was surgically reattached after the incident.

Deputy District Attorney Will Robinson dismissed Johnson's claims in comments following the guilty verdict, calling the incident a "tragedy."

"I don't think this was a self-defense case at all," Robinson said, adding that Johnson was enraged and acted out of anger at the Toole family.

"What happened to Karley was incredibly terrible," Robinson said.

Robinson declined to specify what punishment he will request when Johnson is sentenced by Judge J. Thompson Hanks, saying only that he will ask the judge to "punish him appropriately."

Hanks could sentence Johnson to as little as probation, and as much as four years in prison, Robinson said.

Jeff Toole called Johnson a "sociopath," a "sick man," and "a danger to society," and said he would be unhappy with anything less than jail time for Johnson.

His son, Brandon Toole, echoed his sentiments: "I just want to see him in jail."