Johnny Depp dangled his dog out of the window of a moving car and joked about putting it in a microwave after he became angry with Amber Heard over a painting from her former partner, according to bombshell courtroom testimony.
Amber Heard’s sister Whitney Henriquez took the stand in Fairfax, Virginia, on Wednesday where she testified about the shocking alleged incident back on 21 March 2013.
She said she was in the front of the car with Mr Depp’s driver while Ms Heard and the Pirates star were in the back.
“At some point I heard the back window open and Johnny is holding our dog out the window and I froze,” she said.
“I was scared because I just remember thinking I knew how inebriated he was and the dog was very small and I thought if she twitched or if lost her somehow she was just going to go out of the window.”
Ms Henriquez said Mr Depp brought the dog back into the car and was laughing about the incident.
“He was laughing – just this really scary, loud cackle,” she said.
“Then he made some joke about putting her in the microwave.”
Ms Henriquez said that the incident unfolded when Mr Depp was under the influence and accused Ms Heard of being unfaithful – firstly of having an affair with a friend she had been photographed with and secondly of rekindling a relationship with an ex because of a painting hanging on a wall.
She said she had arrived at a property in Orange where the couple were staying to find the place “filled with smoke” and Mr Depp “slurring” and upset with Ms Heard.
“His speech was slurred,” she said, adding that it was really hard to understand what he was saying.
Mr Depp allegedly told her that he was “upset” that her sister had been photographed with their friend Marie in France and that he believed it “must have meant she was having an affair with her”.
Mr Depp said that “everyone would be laughing at” Ms Heard, she testified.
Ms Henriquez testified that Mr Depp’s focus then “shifted to a painting on the wall that was done by one of my sister’s exes”.
She told the court that the painting had been on the wall since they moved in there but, at that moment, became “convinced that it was on the wall to taunt him and tease him”.
He believed that it must have meant that Amber was back together with her ex, she said.
During the incident, Ms Henriquez said that her sister was keeping her distance from her then-boyfriend.
When she tried to approach and put her arms around him at one point, he allegedly told her to “f*** off”.
Ms Henriquez said that she noticed that her sister’s face was “swollen and red” at the time and that her lip “did appear to be cut”.
However, she said that she didn’t think much of it at the time as, back then, she didn’t know about the alleged abuse.
She said she assumed her red, swollen face was from “crying” while her cut lip just “wasn’t my focus frankly” at the time.
Ms Henriquez said that she instead spent around four or five hours trying to get Mr Depp to leave the house as he was late for filming for a documentary with Keith Richards.
Eventually, she said they managed to get Mr Depp to leave the house but he insisted that Ms Heard come along with them. It was on their way to the filming that he allegedly dangled the dog out of the moving car.
Ms Henrique’s testimony came one day after Ms Heard concluded her own testimony at the defamation trial with her ex-husband.
Mr Depp is suing his ex-wife for defamation over a 2018 op-ed she penned for The Washington Post where she described herself as a “a public figure representing domestic abuse”.
The Pirates of the Caribbean actor is not named in the article, which is titled “I spoke up against sexual violence – and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change”.
However Mr Depp claims that it falsely implies that he is a domestic abuser – something that he strongly denies – and that it has left him struggling to land roles in Hollywood. He is suing for $50m.
Ms Heard is countersuing for $100m, accusing Mr Depp of orchestrating a “smear campaign” against her and describing his lawsuit as a continuation of “abuse and harassment”.
