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Road-rage murder of pet is crime against humanity

By Gina Spadafori

published 03/19/2000

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Young. Male. White. Drives a black sport-utility vehicle with Virginia plates. Has a goatee (or did). Who I’ve just described is the most hated person in America, at least as far as anyone who cares about animals is concerned. This is the man who, in an apparent fit of road rage, reached into Sara McBurnett’s car after a fender-bender a few weeks ago, grabbed her little dog, Leo, and threw him under the wheels of rushing cars outside the airport in San Jose, Calif.

Like many animal lovers, I can’t get the scene out of my mind. I see it and hear it almost as vividly as if I’d been the victim. I can imagine what McBurnett felt when she saw Leo run over, and it hits me like a blow to the stomach. I can feel the waves of grief she endured after he died at a nearby emergency room. A happy, outgoing little dog, a loving companion for a decade, has been killed in a way that none of us could imagine in our nightmares. And it could have happened to any of us.

My heart breaks for this woman. And I know that catching the man who did this will never, ever change the reality of those hellish moments for her. Or for us.

I don’t understand why some people are angry because so much attention has been paid to this crime. Why do people get so upset about violence involving an animal, they demand to know, when there are plenty of crimes against people we don’t get so worked up about? These folks angrily accuse anyone who cares about animals of not caring about people.

They’re missing the point. This is a case of cruelty against an animal, to be sure, but it’s also a crime against a human being: Sara McBurnett. Leo’s death was brutal, and his suffering should not be overlooked. But his pain is also over, which is more than you can say about his owner’s suffering.

She will never forget what happened. I’m not sure I can, either. And all of us have to live with the knowledge that somewhere out there is a man so full of hatred and anger that he chose to hurt another human being in the worst way he could, by causing an animal she loved to die violently before her eyes.

If that isn’t a crime against a human being, I don’t know what is.

Crime against animals may now and then generate a lot of attention, but they’re not treated all that seriously in the end. Law enforcement can’t get all that worked up about animal cruelty when there are “more important” crimes out there, and the courts are often prone to a “boys will be boys” approach to young offenders. And yet cruelty against animals is one of the most surefire ways to predict a future of violence against people.

I’ll grant you that most of the people who’ve donated tens of thousand to a reward fund to capture Leo’s killer weren’t looking at the bigger picture when they wrote their checks. But their gut instincts were correct: This is a crime we should care about. This is a criminal who should be punished to the fullest extent possible.

Sending this man to jail won’t change what happened, but it will send a message to at least one person — and probably many more — that we will not and cannot tolerate such cruelty against one of our own.

And that’s a message we all should get behind.