“We have made the decision to cut ties with Ceaser Emanuel from Black Ink Crew New York,” VH1 said in a statement Thursday
Ceaser Emanuel has been fired from VH1’s long-running reality show, Black Ink Crew New York, after a video showing him hitting a dog recently surfaced online.
The clip was from a Ring camera and shows the tattoo shop owner, 43, striking the canine with a folding chair multiple times, as well as locking the dog in a cage, and pushing it down a hill.
“We have made the decision to cut ties with Ceaser Emanuel from Black Ink Crew New York,” VH1 wrote in a statement posted to Facebook on Thursday. “Since next season was close to finishing production, this decision will not impact the upcoming season.”
Emanuel’s lawyer, Walter Mosley, does not dispute it was his client in the video but tells PEOPLE it is an old video and Emanuel was stopping some aggressive dogs from attacking other animals.
“Ceaser is an avid dog lover and has many dogs and has had in his lifetime, many dogs and other pets,” Mosley tells PEOPLE. “This was an unfortunate situation as I understand it, where there were a number of other aggressive dogs attacking smaller dogs and probably was a lapse of judgment as to how to appropriately break it up, break up that interaction.”
“In some ways, what was not seen in that video, was him protecting the smaller dogs, he just likely didn’t do this in the best way, so he’s seeking assistance and help to make sure that as a dog owner, he’s properly managing it, and understands how to interact in more healthy ways with all types of dogs and all of his dogs, but this is certainly a situation that he had addressed a long time ago,” the lawyer adds.
“It’s unfortunate that a video that’s probably almost a year old or older surfaced and created such a disruption. It’s something that we’ve addressed and been addressing for some time.”
Emanuel’s costar, Donna Lombardi, reposted the video on her Instagram Wednesday, calling out the tattoo artist.
“If you can treat a dog like this, it shows how sick of a person you truly are. I don’t even get into the life of this man, but this video made me so upset. Anyone who knows me, knows I LOVE animals. Especially dogs,” she wrote in part.
Black Ink Crew New York, which follows the day-to-day drama at a Black-owned and operated tattoo shop in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, first premiered on VH1 in 2013, and has been on the air for nine seasons total.
TMZ was the first to report the news of Emanuel’s firing.
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