Former Palm Coast Resident, 56, Pleads in Fatal Dog Choking Case and Could Avoid Prison

Howard T. Blair, the 56-year-old former Palm Coast resident arrested last year for choking a dog to death after claiming she had attacked his chihuahua, has pleaded no contest and will be sentenced on March 4. 

Blair tendered an open plea before Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols on Tuesday, leaving it to the judge to decide the sentence. He pleaded to a charge of cruelty to animals, a third-degree felony with a maximum penalty of five years in prison. But he does not score a mandatory prison sentence, based on his sentencing points, Assistant State Attorney Tara Libby said./ That does not mean the prosecutor will not ask for prison time. Indications point to a mild resolution.

Nichols called it “an incredibly sad case all the way around” and “tragic on very, very many different levels, but also the result of “not somebody going in with horrible intentions, but horrible things happened.”

The incident took place a year ago at the house Blair used to share with his wife on Warwick Lane in Palm Coast. The couple had five dogs. One of them, Nutmeg, was a 15-month-old mixed breed between an American bulldog and a labrador retriever. There were three chihuahuas in the house. When Nutmeg attacked one of the chihuahuas, Blair choked Nutmeg, because the dog had attacked the same chihuahua before. 

His wife left him that night to stay elsewhere, upset that he had not opted to discipline the dog and place her in her crate instead of killing her, and has since filed for divorce. There’s “nothing criminal here, but something that needed to be done,” Blair told Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies. He was arrested, charged and booked at the Flagler County jail, and was released on $2,500 bond. 

A commercial refrigerator technician employed by a Jacksonville company, he has since moved to Palatka. He appeared before Nichols on Tuesday ina  wheelchair, the result of a recent motorcycle crash.  “I was in a near fatal motorcycle wreck,” he said. “I dodged a deer, but killed my motorcycle, almost myself.”

The judge impressed on him and his attorney, Donovan Huseman, the need to make a statement at his sentencing, presumably in hopes of mitigating the sentence. “Mr. Huseman, I know that you will explain to your client how important it is that he does make a statement,” the judge said, “and the importance of that statement being impressing that he understands now what a–” she looked for the right words but did not finish the sentence. 

Blair’s is not the only voice the judge will have heard. The court has so far received at least 22 letters urging the judge not to go easy on Blair. Letters have been mailed from Winter Springs, Daytona Beach, Palm Coast, Winter Park, Ormond Beach and elsewhere, all asking for a harsh sentence, many portraying Blair in merciless terms, and one of them calling for his death: “Please give this man the same sentance [sic] equal to how he treated this innocent animal,” a woman wrote, before modulating her request to “the highest punishment possible so he never hurts another animal again.” 

A Port Orange resident called the case “horrific animal abuse” and asked the judge to punish Blair “under Ponce’s Law for felony cruelty to animals.” Ponce’s Law, named for a dog beaten to death in a Ponce Inlet backyard in 2017 and enacted in 2018 after the bill was introduced by Tom Leek, now the Ormond Beach senator representing Flagler and Volusia counties, allows a judge to prohibit someone convicted of animal abuse from owning any more pets. The law also increases the likelihood of prison time.  

Last year the governor signed Dexter’s Law, after a shelter dog who was decapitated. The law increases sentencing points and also makes prison more likely for an offender, but it applies only in aggravated animal abuse cases involving knowing torture and torment. Even if the behavior applied to Blair–it does not–he could not have been charged under it, since the governor signed it four months after Blair killed Nutmeg. But he will be added to the state’s new, publicly-accessible database of individuals convicted of animal abuse. 

An Edgewater woman mailed a letter to the judge with a picture of Nutmeg, saying the dog “suffered immensely.” Many of the letters are by friends of Blair’s wife. Yet another letter-writer asked that Blair be given “maximum jail time, followed by probation or house arrest, restitution for Jaxson’s veterinary bills ($15,000 and on-going)” and other penalties. Jaxson was another one of the couple’s dogs and was allegedly hurt during the incident. 

The sentencing is at 1:30 p.m. on March 4 in Courtroom 401, at the Flagler County courthouse.