A woman convicted of murdering a Chihuahua earlier this year has pleaded with a California judge that she is “not a violent person.”
34-year-old serial car burglar Wakeen Best, tossed a helpless 4-year-old Chihuahua named Dunky seven stories to its death on Feb. 10 after finding the animal inside a Mercedes she was trying to steal, according to police.
Sacbee.com reports: When Dunky’s owner returned from lunch to find the animal dead on the ground level, at first the owner assumed the death was an accident — that Dunky had somehow sneaked out of the car, and had wandered off the ledge, according to police.
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But when the owner went up to the vehicle, there was a crime scene: The Mercedes had been broken into, the glove compartment had been rifled through and there was blood and shattered glass all over the parking garage, according to police.
There was also a trail of blood from the Mercedes to the ledge, where prosecutors said Best threw Dunky to his death.
Defense attorneys had tried arguing that killing an animal would have been out of character for Best.
“She is just a regular ol’ auto burglar,” Deputy Public Defender Alexandra Pray said, admitting that Best has a criminal history, according to the San Francisco Examiner. “She’s not someone who hurts animals.”
Security footage showed Best had been in the garage around the time of the dog’s death, which is what led to her arrest a day after the incident, authorities said.
In their case against Best, prosecutors pointed to that video and to audio snippets that captured the burglary — including a recording of a person screaming “shut yo ass up” at the yapping dog during the break-in, the Chronicle reported.
Following Best’s three-year prison sentence, she will have eight months of supervised release, Bay City News Service reports.
San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón said after the guilty verdict that Best “showed no remorse” for the crime, but that the guilty verdict was at least “a small step toward bringing justice for Dunky” the Chihuaha.
Best looked at things differently at her sentencing this week.
“Things in this case got blown out of proportion,” Best told the judge on Thursday, the Chronicle reported. “The media said things that weren’t true. I’m not a violent person, and jail has been very hard for me.”
