Man Admits Tossing Stranger's Chihuahua Off Bridge

A Maryland man who tossed a stranger's Chihuahua off a bridge in a fit of anger faces up to more than four years in prison after pleading guilty yesterday to theft and aggravated animal cruelty. David Beers, 35, snatched the 4-pound Zoey after her owners ordered him off their property, and threw her out his car window driving over a bridge last June. Beers, mistaking the couple's quarter-mile-long driveway for a utility road, had stopped to make a cell phone call, the AP reports.

Beers, a lanky Marine Corps veteran and wireless communications technician, left the property but returned a few minutes later when the couple was gone, grabbed the white-and-tan Chihuahu, and drove nearly 4 miles to the bridge, at least 20 feet above the water. "As I drove across the Catoctin Creek bridge, I let the dog go while driving, out of the passenger window," Beers said in a written statement taken by police. The dog was never found. Beers will be sentenced June 7.