During a new interview, Eason said he killed the dog in order to protect the couple’s 2-year-old daughter, Ensley Jolie.
David Eason is claiming that he killed Jenelle Evans’ French bulldog, Nugget.
Nugget’s death made headlines in May, after it was claimed that Eason shot and killed the pet. Following the incident, Evans temporarily lost custody of her children and was fired from MTV's Teen Mom 2. A police investigation concluded that there was no evidence of animal cruelty and that Evans said that she only reported the incident to the cops for publicity.
However, during a new interview with People TV, Eason, 31, said he killed the dog in order to protect the couple’s 2-year-old daughter, Ensley Jolie.
“It was a situation where my daughter, her health, her safety was in danger,” Eason said. “This was something that nobody wants to ever have to do. The dog was aggressive. Yes, she might not be huge or whatever, but when a dog bites a child on the face more than one time, then it should never be around the child again.”
“If you give the dog up for adoption, one day it’s going to be around children again,” Eason continued. “If you call the authorities at that point, the law says the dog has to be euthanized. I’m not going to pay anyone to euthanize my dog when I could do it myself.”
Eason then became emotional while discussing how much he had loved Nugget.
“I still think about her every day,” he said. “It’s really hard for me. A lot of people put me down for it, they hate me for it, but like I said it was not something I wanted to do.”
Evans, 27, took to Instagram in May to share her grief over Nugget’s death. Eason then seemingly confirmed his role in the death by posting a since-deleted video showing Nugget appearing aggressive towards Ensley and declaring in the caption that it was important to him to protect his family and that “some people are worth killing or dying for.”
However, in July, police closed their investigation into the incident, releasing a statement confirming that they did not find any blood evidence or any other physical evidence to validate that an animal had been fatally injured in the couple’s home. The statement also said that one day after the incident, Evans changed the story that she had given cops, and that she also said she filed the initial animal cruelty report for publicity.
This seemed to be refuted by Evans during the People TV interview, during which she claimed that she had hoped to keep the alleged incident private, however a friend informed her son Kaiser’s father, Nathan Griffin, about what had happened and he allegedly tipped off the media.
Evans defended Eason’s supposed actions, noting that he grew up hunting and fishing in the country and that his father taught him, “Don’t let any animal hurt you.”
“The way he was raised is really different than a lot of other places,” Evans said. “We understand that people are scared of the whole gun thing, [but] they just don’t understand it from David’s perspective. He just thought what he was doing was best.”
“He does realize that what he did was wrong,” she added. “And he does realize that he shouldn’t have done it. And he said, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize how bad it was going to hurt everyone.’”
Evans said that Eason has since taken anger management classes and that the couple has also attended co-parenting counseling sessions.
She regained custody of her children and celebrated her eldest son, Jace’s, 10th birthday in August.
See more on Evans and Eason below.
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