James Wesley Henry (Ashville Police Dept.); 11-year-old Beignet (WLOS screenshot)
A 43-year-old man has been arrested after he allegedly “eviscerated” a woman’s dog at a local park, grabbing the leashed animal in broad daylight and violently stabbing and slashing its throat in an apparently unprovoked attack while the dog’s owner was playing pickleball.
James Wesley Henry was taken into custody on Monday and charged with one count of felony cruelty to animals, authorities in North Carolina announced.
According to a press release from the Asheville Police Department, officers at about 3:21 p.m. on Monday, June 26 responded to a 911 call about a dog being stabbed at Weaver Park, which is just over 100 miles west of Charlotte, North Carolina.
“When officers arrived, the dog owner advised officers that while playing pickleball, a man approached her dog, grabbed it by the throat, and started slashing it with a knife unprovoked,” police wrote in the release. “The dog succumbed to the injuries sustained on the scene. Shortly after their arrival, and with several community members’ assistance identifying the suspect, officers quickly located and arrested James Wesley Henry.”
Henry is currently being held at the Buncombe County Detention Center. A magistrate judge ordered him to remain in detention in lieu of a $10,000 secured bond or $1,000 to a bondsman.
The dog’s owner, Liesbeth Mackie, and several others who were at the park that day spoke to the Asheville Watchdog, a local news outlet, about witnessing the harrowing incident.
Mackie told the newspaper that her dog, Beignet, was an 11-year-old mixed breed that her husband, Tom Mackie, had brought home from a local adoption event when Beignet was only six weeks old. She reportedly said that she often brought the 35-pound animal with her when she went to the park to play pickleball. On the day of the incident, she said she secured Beignet with a long leash that allowed him to lay down in the shade just feet from the pickleball court where she was playing.
Liesbeth Mackie and several other park-goers reportedly heard a man shouting coming from the woods nearby and assumed he was in an argument with someone. However, when they looked, they saw that the man — later identified as Henry — was completely alone.
Liesbeth Mackie resumed playing the game, but a short while later, her partner said to her, “Someone is beating your dog,” the Watchdog reported. Several witnesses reportedly told police that they initially thought the man was beating the helpless dog with his fist and only later realized that he was actually wielding a knife.
“All of a sudden, I noticed that there was some commotion happening with her dog,” Eric Hulin, who was on the court at the time of the attack, told the outlet. “I saw the attacker, definitely with all of his strength — with what I thought at the time was a closed fist — slamming on the dog, really.”
Hulin reportedly said that after the attack, the suspect “started walking away quite casually like nothing even happened” despite the gruesome scene he left behind.
“I turned and looked at the dog, and saw its last couple of yelps and twitches,” Hulin said. “It was covered in blood. There was blood everywhere. It took me a moment because I wasn’t sure what happened.”
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
