WEST CHESTER, Pennsylvania – A judge dismissed criminal animal cruelty charges filed against a Pennsylvania state trooper who struck a loose horse several times with a patrol vehicle and pinned it to the sidewalk, where it was then euthanized.
The decision came Tuesday after Chester County District Attorney Chris de Barrena-Sarobe notified the judge that Cpl. Michael Perillo’s attorney intended to argue at trial that the horse needed to be run over to avoid a potentially serious accident. Noting that the law requires people to value the lives of humans over animals, Barrena-Sarobe said, “I believe the necessity defense is valid and would succeed at trial.”
Perillo was suspended without pay after the charges were filed in July 2022 by the State Police Internal Affairs. He faced two felony counts of aggravated animal cruelty and one count of cruelty to animals, a misdemeanor, stemming from the December 2021 incident involving a horse on a highway in Chester County, west of Philadelphia.
The horse was on the shoulder of the road in Lower Oxford Township and had already been struck by a driver before troopers were dispatched, authorities said. Perillo drove a vehicle into the horse several times, causing it to fall, and then pinned the horse to the road. Another soldier then sacrificed him.
Perillo, who enlisted in the state police in September 2006, was assigned to Troop J in Avondale. He remained free on bail pending trial.
His lawyer, Williams Davis, told the West Chester Daily Local News that the decision to request dismissal was the correct choice and thanked the prosecutor for requesting dismissal.
“We always felt it was an unfair process,” Davis said. “If my client had not acted, things could have turned deadly. He was trying to protect other drivers.”
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