Chapter 103 Confusion: Why do people kill dogs?
Under the cold interrogation lights, Mao Dali's pale, youthful face, streaked with tears, seemed covered in frost. His thin body, wrapped in the oversized blue-gray prison uniform, trembled uncontrollably. The steel handcuffs on his wrists seemed far too heavy for his frail frame.
Jiang Ling, Zheng Yu, and Li Zhenliang, who was in charge of taking notes, sat opposite him without rushing to speak.
The heart-wrenching crying in the warehouse seemed to have exhausted all his strength. At this moment, Mao Dali's eyes were empty, with only a deep-seated exhaustion and a kind of almost numb despair remaining.
Unexpectedly, before Jiang Ling could speak, Mao Dali raised his head, his voice hoarse from prolonged thirst: "I killed the person."
After hiding in the warehouse for several days, Mao Dali dared not drink water or eat anything in order to minimize the need to use the toilet. He was terrified at the slightest sound outside.
In his extreme panic, Mao Dali even thought that since he was going to be shot anyway, he might as well kill a few more dog abusers before he died, stuff bones into their mouths, tie dog leashes around their necks, and let them experience what it's like to be a dog!
Jiang Ling's gaze was calm and still, without any urging. She simply looked at Mao Dali with a deep, tranquil expression, like a still pool containing his turbulent emotions.
"Wang Youfu, he's not human!" Mao Dali's voice suddenly rose, filled with long-suppressed, twisted hatred, and tears welled up again.
“He hit me, cursed at me, and withheld my pay, and I endured it all! My parents died early, my grandfather is sick, and I have to earn money. But he shouldn’t have, shouldn’t have killed Ah Huang!”
He slammed his fist on the table, the handcuffs clanging, his body leaning forward in agitation: "Ah Huang was so well-behaved. If you fed it a bite, it would treat you like family. Even when Wang Pang kicked its leg and broke it, it didn't bark or bite. It trusted me completely, always following me around. But then, Wang Pang, right in front of me, hit it with a brick, just once! Once! Ah Huang, it didn't even bark, it just stood there looking at me sadly. It died, its eyes still open."
Mao Dali cried again when Ah Huang was mentioned.
Uncontrollable, heart-wrenching cries once again filled the interrogation room. Those cries contained the agonizing pain of losing her only solace, hatred for Wang Youfu's killing of the dog, mixed with anger at her own powerlessness and profound helplessness.
Jiang Ling didn't interrupt him. She understood that he needed to release these pent-up emotions.
After crying for a long time, Mao Dali slumped back into his chair as if all his strength had been drained, and recounted the whole incident in a low voice: "That noon, there weren't many customers in the shop. He couldn't collect his money, and he had been drinking, so he started yelling at me, calling me useless. He said the shop's poor business was all because I kept Ah Huang. He suddenly went crazy and hit Ah Huang with a brick. Ah Huang fell to the ground, its four legs still kicking, as if asking me why I didn't save it."
At this point, Mao Dali's body began to tremble violently, his eyes staring blankly at the pale light, as if he had returned to that kitchen filled with bloodshed and despair.
"Even so, Fatty Wang still wouldn't let Ah Huang go. He said he was going to skin it, butcher it, and stew it for soup to go with his drinks. My head went blank, and I couldn't hear anything anymore. He was drunk, and his breath reeked of alcohol, which smelled awful. I... I don't know what came over me, but I grabbed the spatula from the stove and smashed it hard against his face. I told him to kill Ah Huang! I told him to kill the dog and sell its meat!"
At this point, Mao Dali looked at Jiang Ling, his bloodshot eyes filled with confusion: "I, I didn't want to kill him. I really didn't want to kill him with a spatula. I just didn't want him to kill Ah Huang. I just wanted him to shut that stinking mouth of his."
Mao Dali's breathing suddenly became rapid: "He slapped me, I dodged, he chased after me, and I don't know how, he suddenly leaned back, and then I heard a 'thud'! His head hit the stove, and then, then he fell down and didn't move. Blood, a lot of blood, flowed out of his head."
The truth is like an onion that has been peeled open; it's pungent and irritating.
Wang Youfu's death was not caused by Mao Dali striking him with a spatula, but rather by him falling and hitting the sharp corner of the stove with the back of his head. In a state of extreme panic and lack of common sense, Mao Dali mistakenly believed that he had killed someone, and therefore fled in panic.
The details Mao Dali described, especially the scene of Wang Youfu slipping and falling backward, hitting the stove with the back of his head, are completely consistent with the conclusion in the preliminary forensic report that "severe traumatic brain injury was caused by a single, violent impact to the back of the head, with the impact point being the protruding sharp corner of the stove," which strongly confirms the nature of "manslaughter."
"So, you were protecting Ah Huang and resisting Wang Youfu's beating. During the struggle, you slipped and fell, hitting your head on the stove and dying?" Jiang Ling clearly recounted the key points.
"Yes! That's it!" Mao Dali nodded vigorously, tears mixed with sweat rolling down his face. "I didn't want him to die. I just... I just didn't want Ah Huang to die, so I hit him a few times with the spatula."
Jiang Ling asked, "And then? Why didn't you call the police?"
Mao Dali shook his head frantically: "He's dead! How dare I call the police? Murderers pay with their lives! I don't want to die, I don't want to be executed!"
Mao Dali looked down at his hands, hands that had once touched sticky blood and gradually cooling corpses. He suddenly gagged, but nothing came out; only endless fear and nausea remained.
“There were only the two of us in the kitchen at the time. I dragged him to a corner and put him in a potato sack. It was too heavy for me to move, so I found a rope, tied it around his neck, and dragged him. This rope was the one he used to tie up dogs when he went to the countryside to collect dogs. It was very thick and easy to use. At night, when no one was around, I buried him. There was a place behind the kitchen where construction waste was piled up.”
He explained all the details.
—How to haphazardly mop up the bloodstains, how to temporarily hide the sack in the corner of the kitchen, and then continue serving customers with a heart full of fear. How to wait until late at night to bury the body, how to sell the dog slaughter cart that he loathed so much to the scrap yard the next day, and how to tuck the more than two hundred yuan in cash that the restaurant had received two days after Wang Youfu's death into his pocket, and when Ge Cuihua came to the door, to say that Wang Youfu had gone back to his hometown in the countryside, and then to quickly escape after Ge Cuihua chased him away.
“I gave Zhirong fifty yuan so he could buy medicine for Grandpa. As for the rest, I…” Mao Dali’s voice trailed off, filled with confusion and self-loathing. “I don’t know. I don’t dare spend it. I just want to hide away, to hide far away.”
He has finished explaining.
The entire crime was filled with impulse, fear, confusion, and the pitiful instinctive attempt to cover it up afterward.
A humble boy, long oppressed, endured all sorts of bullying from Wang Youfu in order to save money for his grandfather's medicine. His anger slowly simmered until Ah Huang died before his eyes, at which point he finally rose up in rebellion. But… Wang Youfu died right in front of him. Lacking legal awareness, Mao Dali dared not speak out, hastily cleaning up the scene, burying the body, and then hiding himself.
The process was vivid and breathtaking.
"What's the motive? Just because of a dog?" Zheng Yu pressed, her gaze sharp. Although the chain of evidence was complete, a deeper investigation into the motive was crucial for conviction, sentencing, and psychological evaluation.
Mao Dali remained silent for a long time, his head bowed low and his shoulders trembling slightly. Just as Zheng Yu was about to speak again, he suddenly raised his head, his eyes no longer filled with simple fear, but with a deeper and more enduring pain.
“No, it’s not just Ah Huang,” his voice was hoarse, carrying a sorrow beyond his years, “I… I hate how he treated Ah Huang. Because Ah Huang is like… like me when I was a child,”
The interrogation room was silent except for the scratching of pens on paper.
Mao Dali spoke with difficulty, each word seeming to be squeezed out of his throat, "My dad, he used to be like that too. When he was drunk, he would find fault with everything. My mother died early, so he would take it out on me."
He shuddered, as if recalling an extremely horrific scene: "He whipped me with a belt, beat me with a stick, grabbed my head and slammed it against the wall. Once, just because I picked up half a piece of steamed bun that had fallen on the ground, he kicked me down next to the pigsty and called me a lowly beggar."
Tears silently streamed down Mao Dali's dirty cheeks, leaving clear marks: "I... I was just like Ah Huang back then, only able to watch him, afraid to resist. It hurt so much, it really hurt so much."
He raised his handcuffed hands and unconsciously touched the back of his head, where the phantom pain from the beating seemed to linger: "The time my dad was away working was the happiest time of my life. I had a dog named Ah Huang. It accompanied me to school, slept with me, and played with me. My grandpa was very good to me and fed Ah Huang. But when my dad came back, he said that keeping Ah Huang was a waste of food, and that there would be no meat or vegetables at home for the New Year, so he killed Ah Huang!"
At this point, Mao Dali burst into tears again.
All the painful memories of the past flooded back, and Mao Dali cried out hoarsely, "I hate it so much! Why did they kill Ah Huang? It was so good, so obedient, it was my best friend. I hate these adults, I hate those who kill dogs, I really hate it..."
A long silence filled the interrogation room.
Jiang Ling looked at the seventeen-year-old boy in front of her, and saw the fear and trauma in his eyes that came from the abyss of his childhood. A huge wave of emotion surged in her heart.
The violence and psychological trauma suffered in childhood, the fear and helplessness deeply imprinted in the soul, have never truly disappeared; they have only been suppressed and buried.
Until a similar scene appeared: a restaurant selling dog meat, the tyrannical Wang Youfu, and the murdered stray dog Ah Huang—these were like keys that instantly opened the dusty door filled with painful memories, igniting years of pent-up despair and resistance.
Mao Dali was not only rebelling against Wang Youfu, but also against his father who had abused him and killed dogs in his childhood trauma!
How can we save this seventeen-year-old boy?
Jiang Ling remained silent in thought.
Mao Dali is under the age of eighteen and is a minor in the legal sense. According to the current criminal law, a person who has reached the age of sixteen but is under the age of eighteen and commits a crime should be given a lighter or mitigated punishment.
Wang Youfu's death was caused by his own slip and fall. Although Mao Dali was suspected of negligence in handling the crime scene and burying the body, the cause of death was the victim's own accident, and Dali's actions constituted manslaughter. His crime was not particularly serious, his subjective malice was relatively minor, and he surrendered himself to the police, showing a good attitude towards admitting his guilt. His tragic upbringing was also sufficient to garner the judge's sympathy and consideration.
Jiang Ling silently deduced the scenario in her mind.
The crime of negligent homicide carries a sentence of three to seven years. Considering Mao Dali's age, the nature of the crime, his surrender and remorse, as well as the objective factor of the lack of family guardianship, the court is likely to significantly reduce the sentence from the statutory minimum, with the final verdict possibly being around three years imprisonment, or even probation.
In any case, he still has a chance to start over in life, far from the dead end he imagined, which was being shot.
Thinking of this, Professor Ying Xuanji's image suddenly flashed through Jiang Ling's mind.
Ying Songmao's aunt, a professor at Huaxia Public Security University, was a wise female professor who, at the height of her academic career, resolutely shifted her research focus from complex criminal psychological profiling to more fundamental research on adolescent psychology and family education.
To be honest, Jiang Ling was puzzled by this at first, and even felt it was a bit of a "waste of talent." However, at this moment, looking at Mao Dali, whose life trajectory had been completely changed by childhood trauma, she suddenly understood Professor Ying's choice.
Prevention is always better than punishment.
Those seemingly insignificant domestic violence and childhood traumas, those neglected adolescent mental health issues, are like invisible bombs buried in the soil of society.
To give an analogy, criminal psychology studies the aftermath of an explosion, while adolescent psychology and family education research focuses on defusing the fuse of a bomb before it is even manufactured.
Only by reducing the birth of "Mao Dali" at its source can we truly save countless souls that might slide into the abyss.
Thinking of this, Jiang Ling looked up at Mao Dali, who was crying because of the painful memories of her childhood: "We will truthfully report your situation to the procuratorate and the court, including the fact that Wang Youfu abused you for a long time, the trauma of Ah Huang's murder, and your childhood experiences. You are a minor, and the judge will take this into full consideration when sentencing you. But you have committed a serious crime and must accept the punishment of the law. During your imprisonment, please reform yourself well, study cultural knowledge and skills diligently. You are still young, and you can start over in the future."
Mao Dali stopped crying and looked at Jiang Ling blankly.
restart?
For him, that word was too distant and a luxury. But the calm, undiscriminating tone in Jiang Ling's words was like a glimmer of light in the darkness, stirring up an indescribable bitterness and a faint, unbelievable expectation in his otherwise lifeless heart.
"I... I can start over?" Mao Dali's voice was tinged with trepidation.
Jiang Ling nodded: "Yes. As long as you're alive, there's hope."
Tears welled in Mao Dali's eyes, but they were no longer tears of sadness and anger; instead, they carried a glimmer of hope: "I... I killed someone, can I still live?"
Jiang Ling patiently explained the legal terms to him.
Seventeen is the age of youth, carefree and unrestrained, but in Mao Dali's life, apart from the little warmth given by his grandfather and cousin, all his comfort comes from Ah Huang.
Therefore, during his years on the run, he became reckless and self-righteous, posing as a "guardian of justice" and committing retaliatory murders.
But now, Jiang Ling's patience, gentleness, and tolerance have opened a window for Mao Dali, giving him strength he had never known before. It seems that no one has ever taught him so clearly how to walk the right path and how to become a valuable person.
Mao Dali finally asked the question that had been hidden in his heart: "Why do people kill dogs? Why is it that killing someone leads to imprisonment and execution, but killing a dog goes unpunished?"
This question struck Jiang Ling like a heavy hammer.
Even Zheng Yu and Li Zhenliang frowned, unsure how to respond.
Jiang Ling did not answer immediately.
She looked into Mao Dali's eyes and saw pain and confusion there. Mao Dali didn't just love and protect dogs; he saw Ah Huang as himself, feeling like he lived like a dog, someone who could be easily harmed by people like Wang Youfu without bearing any consequences.
After a moment of silence, Jiang Ling met Mao Dali's gaze, her voice steady and clear.
"Mao Dali, your question is very painful and profound. My answer to you now is not based on legal provisions or police jargon, but on my understanding as a human being."
"First, because the objects of legal protection are different."
"The core foundation of our current laws is protecting people's rights to life, health, and dignity from infringement. Murder deprives someone of their most fundamental right to life and is the most serious disruption to social order, hence the heaviest penalties. Animals, under the current legal framework, are considered property or items without a clear legal status. If someone injures or kills another person's dog, and that dog is someone else's property purchased, then damaging someone else's property requires compensation for the loss, and in serious cases may constitute the crime of intentional damage to property. However, this is vastly different from the punishment for depriving a person of their life. Stray dogs like Ah Huang... legally, they may not even be considered property."
Mao Dali's eyes dimmed, as if the last glimmer of light was about to go out.
The cold reality had told him, and confirmed, his deepest fear—that vulnerable lives could be trampled upon at will.
“However,” Jiang Ling’s tone shifted, becoming more forceful and unwavering, “this absolutely does not mean that killing dogs is right! It absolutely does not mean that harming animals goes unpunished! Nor does it mean that the suffering of animals is not suffering!”
Her voice trembled slightly with intense empathy: "Ah Huang's suffering was real. The way it looked at you, the fear in its dying moments, were real. The pain you felt was real too. Wang Youfu's cruelty and despicable act of torturing and killing Ah Huang was utterly inhumane! It wasn't just a disregard for a life, but a trampling of kindness, compassion, and basic reverence for life! Morally, this behavior is utterly shameful and should be condemned and spurned by everyone!"
Tears streamed down Mao Dali's face.
Finally, someone acknowledged that his and Ah Huang's suffering was real and deserved to be seen!
"You feel it's unfair, that there are loopholes in the law, that vulnerable lives are not being protected... and that's not wrong."
Jiang Ling's voice lowered, carrying a heavy honesty: "This is indeed a deficiency in the current legal and social understanding, a huge and heartbreaking deficiency. Many people, like you, feel angry and powerless about it."
"But, Mao Dali, you must understand that the law is not an unchanging stone. Society is progressing, and people's understanding is also progressing."
“I have seen many people like you who suffer because of their kindness. They have seen these injustices and cruelty, but instead of resorting to violence, they have stood up to advocate for legislation to protect animals, establish stray animal rescue stations, and educate more people to understand the meaning of treating life with kindness. They are working hard, little by little, to change the current situation of ‘why murderers go to jail and are executed, but killing dogs goes unpunished.’”
"This road is difficult and long, but it is moving forward. Perhaps in five, ten, or even more years, our laws will become more comprehensive, with clearer and harsher penalties for animal abuse and wanton killing. Just as we protect people, we will protect those lives that cannot speak for themselves. At that time, the question you raised may have a different answer."
Having said all that in one breath, Jiang Ling looked at Mao Dali, her tone becoming extremely solemn: "Mao Dali, you asked me why killing dogs is okay? Now, I can only tell you that this is a cold, harsh reality, a pain in the hearts of kind-hearted people. But this does not mean it is justified, much less that it is permanent! Change takes time, and it needs people like you who can feel the pain and yearn for fairness to push it forward in the right way, while abiding by the law."
Jiang Ling's voice softened, carrying a deep admonition: "You chose the most wrong and irreversible path. You treated Wang Youfu the way Wang Youfu treated Ah Huang. You turned yourself into someone who takes another's life. This has landed you under legal punishment. You used violence to fight violence, and in the end, you destroyed your own life."
"The law punishes murder not only because life is precious, but also to uphold a fundamental bottom line: no one has the right to arbitrarily decide the life or death of another, even if the other party is a villain. The existence of punishment is for deterrence, for order, and to tell everyone that this red line cannot be crossed. If you cross it, you must bear the consequences."
Jiang Ling's last words were like a bucket of cold water poured on the burning anger and grief in Mao Dali's heart, instantly sobering him up and plunging him into deep regret.
Mao Dali understood what Jiang Ling meant.
He felt Ah Huang's pain and created even greater pain in the same way, ultimately destroying himself as well. His pursuit of fairness ultimately cost him the opportunity to obtain it.
Mao Dali lowered his head, his shoulders heaving violently, and he wept silently.
This time, the tears were not only for Ah Huang and his own misfortune, but also for a deep understanding of his own sins and endless regret for the irreversible path he had taken.
Jiang Ling looked at him, her heart heavy.
Her answer neither romanticized reality nor avoided the cold, inadequate aspects of the law, but it also pointed out the direction for social progress for Mao Dali.
The road to saving this boy's future is long and arduous.
But Jiang Ling believes that the road to promoting animal protection legislation is not far off.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com