Arriving at a rural property, an Arizona sheriff’s deputy approaches a group of hungry dogs behind a metal fence. Some sleep, while others bark and wag their tails. The agent prepares food and water to corner them, according to the body camera video.
“This is going to suck,” he says.
The officer then pulls out a gun and shoots the dogs one by one, killing seven, before dragging their bloody bodies to his truck. According to the video. He later abandoned the bodies of canines near the train tracks, an incident report says.
The Apache County Sheriff’s Office, which serves approximately 65,000 people, maintains that the deputy did nothing wrong that September day. Chief Deputy Roscoe Herrera said that since the county does not have an animal control service, deputies have discretion to handle animal problems as they see fit. MP Jarrod Toadecheenie declined to comment.
But the incident in Adamana, Arizona, an unincorporated community about 100 miles east of Flagstaff, has outraged local animal advocates who say shooting the dogs was the wrong solution and that the area desperately needs to address hoarding. and the abandonment of animals. Some residents have created Facebook groups to try to find homes for abandoned dogs and expose people who hoard animals illegally.
“The Apache County Sheriff’s Office is not going to do anything to fix the problem,” said Teresa Schumann, founder of the nonprofit Northern Arizona Animal Search and Rescue. “Animals are dying all over the county.”
Molly Ottman, executive editor of the Mountain Daily Star, first obtained Body camera footage of the incident. and I shared it with The Washington Post.
The dogs that were shot They were owned by a divorcing couple who had abandoned the property, Toadecheenie wrote in the incident report. She wrote that she visited the home several times over a three-week period after neighbors called to complain. about the canines.
On the first visit, he counted 10 dogs, “all of which appeared to be in good health.” A few days later, the deputy wrote, he responded to a call that dogs had chased a neighbor’s donkey.
Toadecheenie contacted Schumann, who said he was struggling to find new owners for the dogs when the officer called and said he would “take care of it.” Schumann said she told him the dogs might need to be euthanized if they were feral.
On September 22, Schumann told Toadecheenie that he had been unable to find new homes for the dogs. After telling his supervisor that he planned to shoot the dogs, the officer bought dog food and a tray, and collected water from a fire station.
He then went to the couple’s property, corralled the dogs with food and water, put on headphones and began shooting them, body camera footage shows. Toadecheenie shot a dog two more times as she continued to move.
Two dogs fled unharmed and hid under a shed. Schumann later took them to a local animal shelter. One died of parvovirus shortly after arriving and the other was adopted, said Brandon Smigiel, supervisor at Holbrook Animal Care and Control.
In the incident report, Toadecheenie recommended that the couple who Allegedly abandoned dogs will be charged with animal cruelty. As of Friday, no charges had been filed, according to county records.
Herrera, the deputy sheriff, acknowledged that the situation had caused “distress” to the community.
“This tragic decision was made under extremely difficult circumstances due to a combination of limited resources, the deliberate neglect and abandonment of the dogs by their original owners, and the considerable amount of time spent seeking help from outside resources,” he said in a statement. to the mail.
In a separate statement provided to KPNX 12 News on June 6, the sheriff’s office appeared to blame a lack of funding.
“Apache County does not have an animal care and control department. In unincorporated areas that responsibility remains in the hands of the deputies and the actions taken vary and are considered on a case-by-case basis. “We don’t have the infrastructure or the budget to support a department like that.”
Schumann, who runs the nonprofit rescue organization, said he never thought the officer would shoot the animals.
“It makes me angry when the sheriff’s office says they don’t have the resources.” handle situations with animals differently, he said. “There are a lot of people who are trying to help.”
The Arizona Humane Society called the situation “completely preventable” and regretted that the sheriff’s office had not asked about it. for help.
“This horrific incident lacked all compassion and judgment,” Jennifer Armbruster, a spokesperson for the humane society, said in a statement. “And what is clearer is that establishing an animal care and control service in Apache County is an absolute necessity to prevent something like this from happening in the future.”
Animal hoarding is at “epidemic levels” in Arizona, creating dangerous situations, said Terri Hoffman, founder of Animal Rights Champions of Arizona. Last summer, three pit bull mixes mauled a 2-year-old Apache County girl to death. Still, Hoffman said he wants the officer to be held accountable and that killing abandoned dogs is not an adequate solution to hoarding.
“I’ve been in homes where there are over 53 dogs,” Hoffman said. “There are also people here who treasure horses and goats. I have seen dogs with open wounds, serious infections. “The animals are dying.”
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