Homeless man accused of bashing puppy to death

It's an act of unspeakable cruelty - as a homeless man is accused to bashing a puppy to death.

FOX 46 Charlotte spoke with the barber who watched it happen outside his shop.

"A baby. A puppy. Everything is a small life. It's a life that you are taking with your bare hands. It's a little radical. It's not like you are shooting a bow and arrow down the street. No, you are actually feeling the impact of what you are doing, and it takes another type of person to do that," Defay Lomick, barber shop owner, said.

Lomick said he still has trouble believing what he saw Thursday night.

Police said a homeless man killed a puppy with his bare hands right in front of Lomick's Barbershop.

The brutal killing was all over a slice of pizza.

Lomick said Christopher Leach came into his barbershop and asked to use his microwave to heat up the slice, then walked outside and set the pizza on the ground.

After a stray puppy went for the food - Leach allegedly put the animal in a bag and banged it against the sidewalk, killing the animal.

Lomick said he saw the banging but thought Leach was trying to break up some ice on the ground.

"My customer was like...that's not the ground, that's the bag. And I'm like...the bag! I said there's a dog in that bag," Lomick explained.

Lomick said he went outside to confront Leach, and that's when Leach got agitated and threw a stick through his window.

Leach has been around this particular barbershop before...

Lomick said he let him earn some extra cash by sweeping up, but the barber had never seen the puppy, or this side of Leach before.

"If you can continue to do that to someone like that then there are no measures of what you could do to a human," Lomick said.

Christopher Leach has a long criminal history. In the past two years he's been in and out of jail about 10 times. His rap sheet is full of charges ranging from assault with a deadly weapon - to indecent exposure.

Now, he's charged with animal cruelty and destroying Defay's barbershop window. He was held initially on a $25,000 bond.