PD: Fight Over Dog Turns Physical When Man Chokes Ex

On Sept. 8 at 3:56 p.m., police were called to an apartment on Meetinghouse Lane by the upstairs resident who heard the woman who lived below calling for help, and yelling "he is choking me!" The witness said it sounded like "he was beating the [expletive] out of her," according to the report.

The victim, police say, was shaking and crying and had a cut near her right eye. William Joseph John, 25, of Meetinghouse Lane told officers his ex-girlfriend came over to see his dog, which he said she could take home for the weekend, but she began to "talk down" to him.

She had a bag of the dog's "stuff," the report says John said, and refused to give it to him. John says he pushed her away, then broke a computer keyboard; she was throwing shoes and cereal around and screaming at him, so he tried to de-escalate the situation by putting her arm behind her back, letting her go when she calmed down, according to the report.

The victim said they argued over their dog and he threw her up against the front door and the floor then tried to throw her out, twisted her arm and choked her by wrapping his arm around his neck, the report says. She told officers she could not breathe.

As he was choking her, the report says, he kept saying, "is this what you want?" She said they had dated for a year and lived together at one point.

He was charged with violation of a protective order, third-degree assault and third-degree strangulation.