Lynwood pet shop owner pleads no contest to animal cruelty
A Lynwood pet shop owner charged last year with abusing cats, dogs and other animals -- some smothered to death or left to die in trash bins -- pleaded no contest Wednesday to animal cruelty charges and could be sentenced to as many as six years in prison, district attorney officials said today.
Under a deal with prosecutors, Young Sam Park, 53, of Los Angeles pleaded no contest to seven felonies and three misdemeanors, including conviction for animal cruelty, neglect and practicing veterinary medicine without a license. He originally faced 26 counts -- and a possibility of 22 years behind bars.
Park was initially charged in a grand jury indictment last June alleging he had suffocated a Chihuahua with a rubber glove, choked a cocker spaniel and threw a kitten against a pole, among other alleged abuses.
He also was accused of performing operations in which he used wire to stitch up a pit bull, clipped the ears of numerous dogs without anesthesia and cast the broken limbs of animals with concrete and plaster.
Prosecutors said the incidents occurred at Park's Animal House Pet Shop in Lynwood between 2004 and 2007. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals investigated numerous complaints against Park in 2005 and brought the case to prosecutors' attention.
He is free on $451,000 bail and is scheduled to be sentenced by Superior Court Judge Judith L. Meyer in Compton on March 14.
andrew.blankstein@latimes.com
