Cody Ryan Davis and Stormy, the 6-month-old puppy he allegedly stabbed in the skull with a butter knife (PVPD)
A 35-year-old city employee in Oklahoma was arrested this week for allegedly jumping a fence to stab his neighbor’s puppy in the head with a butter knife. Cody Ryan Davis was taken into custody on Wednesday and charged with one count of felony cruelty to animals, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
According to a press release from the Pauls Valley Police Department, officers responded at about 8 p.m. on Sunday to a 911 regarding “animals at large” — meaning not restrained or under the control of an owner — at a residence in the 300 block of East Coffee Avenue in Pauls Valley, over 50 miles southeast of Oklahoma City. When first responders arrived, an officer made contact with two women who said the dog causing the problem was at an intersection.
While en route to that location, the call was changed to a report of “a dog being stabbed in the head” in the 400 block of South Pecan Street, an incident report states.
Once there, an officer saw a man and a woman, both of whom he knew from previous encounters, sitting on the porch outside a home. The woman appeared “panicked” and the officer heard her yell, “Who stabs a dog with a butter knife?”
The officer said he then realized the man was “holding a small white puppy approximately 4-6 months old with a butter knife stuck in its head approximately 1 to 2 inches,” the report states.
The officer contacted the man holding the puppy, who told the officer that when he went to the store a little while earlier, the dog followed him. While on his way home from the store, he said that a “city worker” — later identified as Davis — came out of his house then “jumped his fence, stabbed the dog, jumped back over the fence, and ran back into his residence.”
The officer loaded the injured animal into his vehicle and transported the dog to Williamsburg Small Animal Hospital, where vets assessed the animal. An officer took multiple photos of the puppy and noted the animal appeared to be having trouble using its hind legs, had “copious amounts of drool coming from its mouth,” and had “blood coming from its nose.”
The vet told authorities the butter knife had penetrated just over 1.5 inches into the puppy’s skull. The vet then sedated the puppy and removed the knife from its skull. The officer remained in the room with the vet and noted that she “had to put a good amount of force into pulling the knife out.”
Multiple officers said the injured puppy showed “no signs of aggression with them when being handled or transported.”
Officers wrote that Davis when they talked with him later, he “appeared to be under the influence of alcohol” but told them the puppy was “trying to fight his dogs through the fence” and claimed he “threw a butter knife at the dog.”
The Pauls Valley City Manager’s Office told Law&Crime in an email Davis will be suspended from duty pending the outcome of the investigation.
On Friday, the Williamsburg Small Animal Hospital wrote in a Facebook post that the puppy named Stormy is “now happily home with her family.”
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