PITTSBURGH — A Pittsburgh woman was found guilty Friday of stealing a neighbor’s dog and euthanizing it.
The jury found Gisele Paris, 58, guilty in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court of theft, receiving stolen property and cruelty to animals.
Judge Anthony M. Mariani placed Paris on house arrest pending a sentencing hearing set for March 12. Paris will be permitted to leave her home to walk her dog, a cocker spaniel, for 30 minutes a day and for grocery shopping.
Paris faces probation or up to 10 years in jail, if the judge determines that there were aggravating circumstances.
Paris was accused of taking a Siberian husky that belonged to a man who lived nearby and having it euthanized after police came to her home looking for it a few months later.
The dog, Thor, disappeared from the fenced-in yard of Mark Boehler in November 2013 and was seen with Paris on numerous occasions.
Paris claimed that she found the dog in a vacant lot, cared for it and took it to Penn Animal Hospital. After learning that it would cost more than $600 to remove growths on the dog’s hindquarters, Paris called a veterinarian in February to euthanize it in her home.
Mariani denied a prosecution request to require as part of her sentence that. Paris reveal where the dog’s remains are buried so Boehler could have them. She has said she buried the dog in February on a family farm in Armstrong County.
The six-woman, six-man jury began deliberations Tuesday, and after a two-day break for the Christmas holiday resumed deliberations Friday morning. They reached their verdict in less than two hours.
In closing arguments Tuesday morning, assistant district attorney Matthew Wholey and Paris’ defense attorney Robert Mielnicki disagreed over whether Paris’ actions were malicious or misguided.
“The commonwealth never proved that Gisele Paris maliciously euthanized that dog,” Mielnicki told the jury. “You may find what she did was misguided. You wouldn’t have done it. But was it malicious?”
Wholey countered that “the ultimate act of cruelty is to kill the dog.”
“Gisele Paris was on a criminally delusional mission to take Thor from a situation, from conditions that she didn’t approve of,” Wholey said. “Then, it becomes more than she can deal with. The police close in on her, and she kills the dog to destroy the evidence.
“If stealing that man’s dog isn’t an act of maliciousness, I don’t know what is. Gisele Paris denied care to the dog and killed the dog. She did it intentionally, she did it willfully, and she did it maliciously.”
Paris faces a separate trial on charges of simple assault and resisting arrest in the February incident. That trial is tentatively set for April.
