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A 27-year-old man from County Down has been convicted of killing and cooking a dog, before feeding it to another pet.

Dominic O'Connor strangled four-year-old collie, Jess, with a lead before cooking it using "a few onions and an Oxo cube" last December.

O'Connor, who suffers from a personality disorder, was found guilty of causing unnecessary suffering to a dog, which he had bought on Facebook.

He is due to be sentenced next month.

At the two-day-trial, Downpatrick Crown court was told that O'Connor, formerly known as William Moscari, bought the dog on Facebook.

During police questioning, he explained how he had tried to strangle the animal with one lead, but because it had "too much give" he used a smaller one.

He said he then cut the animal up, cooking some of it and feeding it to another dog.

"I cooked it and fed it to the other dog with a few onions and an Oxo cube and salt and pepper," he said.

O'Connor then cut up the dog's carcass with an axe and bread knife, burned it on a fire and dumped the ashes in Portavogie harbour.

The incident was uncovered when O'Connor, of Roden Street in Kircubbin, told hospital health professionals what he had done.

Police then visited his house, where they found burned dog hair and a liquid on the grate of the fire.

A friend of O'Connor's told the jury she had seen the collie one day, but noticed it was missing the following day.

She added that she noticed the shower screen had been pulled across in O'Connor's bathroom and that the house "seemed strange... there was a weird smell to it".

She said he had later confessed that he had strangled the dog, put it in the shower and then into the bin once she had left.

O'Connor conceded that people would be disgusted by his actions, and recognised "part of it was wrong".

He will appear in court for sentencing on 21 November.