Ellie Knoller and Jessica Kuncman. The man with a woman’s name is an alleged dog killer – photo: NCDA
Well, I was surprised at this story. The name deceived me. “Ellie’ is a female name so I’d thought that a woman had beaten the puppies. But rarely ‘Ellie’ is used for men and it’s a variant on the name ‘Eli’ which is Hebrew and Yiddish. I’ll take it then that the accused is Jewish if I may.
So the accused is a young man, Ellie Knoller, 29. He cohabits with a woman, Jessica Kuncman, 30 who is a co-accused.
Knoller is accused of beating two puppies to death by blunt force trauma. The puppies were Tucker and Cooper. The former was a Shepherd-mix and the latter a golden-doodle.
A large amount of force was applied to Tucker which ruptured his kidney causing the dog to bleed to death internally. Cooper also died of internal injuries: a lacerated liver.
The third puppy, another golden-doodle (see photo), was also badly beaten. She suffered broken ribs, bleeding behind the eyes, bruised lungs and a broken leg. She is survived and is being treated.
A grand jury indicted Knoller with aggravated animal cruelty, a felony (a serious crime) plus three counts of the misdemeanour of overdriving, torturing and injuring animals. Kuncman was charged with the lesser crime. She failed to act and protect. She waited 15 hours before calling a vet.
“After 35 years of animal crimes investigations, I have never seen a case like this….To injure the internal organs of a dog takes a large amount of blunt force and great trauma, one could only imagine the suffering these dogs endured.”
Nassau SPCA president Gary Rogers said in a statement
Comment: How could they do this? How? It is beyond belief. I have to conclude that Ellie was either drunk or drugged when he did it. Jessica is hardly less guilty. The pictures of them indicate that they don’t feel shame. I’ll assume the pics are police mug shots taken after the crime.
