{"id":9670,"date":"2016-01-14T16:52:27","date_gmt":"2016-01-14T21:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/?p=9670"},"modified":"2016-01-14T16:52:27","modified_gmt":"2016-01-14T21:52:27","slug":"man-charged-with-aggravated-animal-cruelty-in-death-of-dog-at-state-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/2016\/01\/14\/man-charged-with-aggravated-animal-cruelty-in-death-of-dog-at-state-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Man Charged with Aggravated Animal Cruelty in Death of Dog at State Park"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2013\/06\/NRPcolor_small1.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3473\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3473 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2013\/06\/NRPcolor_small1.jpg\" alt=\"NRP Logo\" width=\"120\" height=\"113\" \/><\/a>A St. Mary\u2019s County man was charged Tuesday with two counts of animal cruelty after he shot a dog and cut its throat at Newtowne Neck State Park on Christmas Day, the Maryland Natural Resources Police said.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Marcus S. Stauffer, 20, of Leonardtown was deer hunting from a tree stand when he saw the dog, a year-old Chesapeake Bay retriever, and shot it twice with a muzzleloader. He climbed down from the stand and cut the dog\u2019s throat.<\/p>\n<p>The dog and another retriever are owned by the ranger who lives at the park. The dogs, which wore collars and tags, were confined to a porch while the ranger patrolled the park but broke free.<\/p>\n<p>The ranger found the one dog and, with along with a Natural Resources Police officer, searched the park for the second dog without success.<\/p>\n<p>Hours later, the ranger encountered Stauffer, who said he thought the dog was a stray and that he \u201cshot it for the public.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He and a family member retrieved the dog\u2019s body from a marshy area.<\/p>\n<p>The charges of animal cruelty, aggravated animal cruelty and destruction of property under $1,000 were reviewed and approved by the St. Mary\u2019s County State\u2019s Attorney and Stauffer was served with a criminal summons yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Feb. 26 in St. Mary\u2019s District Court. If found guilty of all three charges, Stauffer faces a maximum sentence of three years and a fine of $6,500.<\/p>\n<p>The Department of Natural Resources Wildlife and Heritage Service has rescinded Stauffer&#8217;s permit to hunt on southern Maryland public lands that require a permit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A St. Mary\u2019s County man was charged Tuesday with two counts of animal cruelty after he shot a dog and cut its throat at Newtowne Neck State Park on Christmas Day, the Maryland Natural Resources Police said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[957,12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appnews","category-parks","category-nrp-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9670"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9671,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9670\/revisions\/9671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}