YouTube Marc Dionne, of Montclair, is accused of animal cruelty after he allegedly threw a dog from a man's car during a road range incident.
A man pulled a small dog out of a New Jersey couple’s van and threw it into the air during a road rage incident, and it was all caught on shocking video.
Marc Dione, 22, of Montclair, is being accused of animal cruelty after he allegedly committed the act over the weekend.
According to NJ.com, the New Jersey SPCA Humane Police filed criminal and civil charges against Dione after an investigation when the video surfaced online.
In the video, Dione, a Lyft driver, is seen in an altercation with Gary Kaey. Dione’s red car is shown stopped to the right of the van. Kaey’s wife, Linda, sits inside the van as her husband charges at Dione, missing and falling hard to the ground. Kaey continues his pursuit of Dione and grabs him by the wrist and shoulder before heading back to his car.
But it didn’t end there.
Dione follows the man back to the van, opens a door and reaches in through the backseat, grabbing the Kaeys’ miniature pinscher, a 12-year-old named Daphne. He takes the dog and tosses it into the air toward a nearby curb.
Bystanders in a nearby vehicle recorded footage of the incident and offered horrified commentary. When the dog is thrown up into the air, a woman in the vehicle screams, saying “the dog’s gonna die.”
Watch the video below, but be warned that it contains graphic and disturbing content.
The dog was uninjured in the melee, and Dione took off after committing the act.
“Despite some bruises and stress resulting from this traumatic event, Daphne is recovering well,” the NJSPCA said in a ews release.
Kaey and his wife Linda told WCBS that Dione, whose last name is listed as Dionne in the story, was weaving in and out of traffic for about a half-mile before he got stopped at a bus stop, exiting his car in anger.
“He was upset about the stopping bus in front of him, jumped out on our hood, stomped on the hood,” Linda said to the news outlet.
Dion’s mother also spoke with WCBS and gave a a different account than the couple. She said her son was “forced off the road” by Gary, which is why he was so angry. She called her son an “animal lover.”
“I think the man should be punished for assaulting my son,” the mother said to the news station. “Unfortunately without thinking, Marc was trying to get the guy away from him, and therefore he reached into the car. He’s not an animal hater, he’s an animal lover.”
