Teen pleads to killing dog
Published 8:32 pm Wednesday, May 11, 2016
A Suffolk teen charged as an adult has been sentenced to two years and 11 months for stealing two cars and killing a dog.
Daquan Miller, 17, also is awaiting trial in a Portsmouth murder case.
Miller was set to go to trial on the Suffolk charges next week, but he pleaded guilty in April.
According to prosecutor Susan Walton, Miller and some co-defendants had stolen two cars in August 2015. They were riding around in one of the cars when Miller saw the dog walking down the street and decided to shoot it.
“It belonged to one of the people in the neighborhood,” Walton said. “It was a family pet.”
The dog’s owner now lives in Georgia, Walton said. “One of the reasons she left was because of this incident.”
Miller was sentenced to serve two years on the felony animal cruelty charge, as well as a total of 11 months to serve on the two auto theft charges.
Miller’s Portsmouth charges stem from the Sept. 6 shooting of 60-year-old Ronald Lindsay of Chesapeake, who was found early that morning in the 1900 block of Victory Boulevard suffering from a gunshot wound.
In May 2011, at the age of 12, Miller was accused of beating a kitten he and a group of other children found near their homes on Brook Avenue. The kitten — later dubbed “Little Heart” because of a blue heart drawn on its leg cast — died of internal injuries about a week after the incident.
According to the other children who witnessed the incident, he threw the stray against a wall, beat it with a stick and then pulled out a pocketknife. Another boy knocked the pocketknife out of his hand.
He was found guilty in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court and sentenced to supervised probation, a mentoring program, therapy and a suspended sentence of 30 days in juvenile detention. His name was not released at the time of that charge.
Since then, according to court records, he has other offenses on his juvenile record, including assault and battery and violations of probation.