Florida Dog "Lover" Charged

Florida Man, 25, Arrested For Strangling, Then Cooking His Mother's Puppy

A Florida man has been jailed for allegedly strangling his mother’s puppy, cutting the animal in pieces, and cooking its ribs in a pot on the stove.

According to Tampa cops, Thomas Elliot Huggins, 25, killed the puppy, named “Bandit,” early yesterday morning and then “cut up the dog into quarters and stored it in the freezer for future meals.”
After a family member learned about the dog’s killing, police were summoned last night to the Huggins home, where officers “found the dog’s ribs cooked in a pot on the stove” and the pet’s head in the garbage. Huggins told cops that he had actually consumed part of the animal.

According to a Tampa Police Department report, Huggins’s mother Margie showed one cop “a pair of full ribs on the stove that appeared to be fully cooked,” as well as “the quartered parts of her dog that were stored in the freezer.” Huggins’s sister told the patrolman that her brother “has not been right” for years, and “goes on and on about religion and the lord telling him to do things.”

Huggins told the cop that he “choked the dog with his bare hands” after the pet “began to be aggressive towards him.” He then described how he dismembered “Bandit” with a steak knife. Huggins explained that he “went about his day,” and then, around 6 PM, “put the ribs in a pot and cooked them on the stove… Mr. Huggins advised that he did indeed eat some of the rib meat.”

Claiming that he did not think his actions were wrong, Huggins told police that he “learned how to clean an animal from his mom as they have done it in the past with squirrels and rabbits.”
Seen in the above mug shot, Huggins was arrested on a felony cruelty to animals charge. He was subsequently booked into the Hillsborough County jail, where he is being held in lieu of $2000 bond.