A heartless Long Island man who locked his innocent pooch in a dark closet with no food or water – leaving it to starve to death while he vacationed at Disney World – is getting a cell of his own.
A Riverhead judge on Monday gave Jason Griffin, 27, a year behind bars for killing his 4-year-old pit bull-Labrador mix, Candy.
“I’m not a bad person, but I know I allowed a terrible thing to happen,” Griffin said as he read from a statement in an emotionless voice. “I will regret it for the rest of my life.”
Candy had been starved for weeks, prosecutors said, by the time Griffin’s landlord found her carcass in a closet of the tenant’s Northport basement apartment. Griffin was arrested Jan. 31 as he arrived home from the Florida trip with his 7-year-old daughter.
The nearly skeletal creature had wasted away from a healthy weight of 65 pounds to only 15 pounds. Her hair had almost completely fallen out, and she was lying in her own waste.
“You could count the dog’s ribs through its skin,” said Suffolk prosecutor Glenn Kurtzrock. “It was totally emaciated and had clearly starved to death.”
The dog suffered tremendously in its final weeks, prosecutors said.
“I’m sure that poor dog suffered unimaginable pain,” Kurtzrock told the Post. “This was an inhumane, cruel, vicious act.”
Griffin’s daughter, now 8, has been placed in her grandparents’ custody until he serves out his term.