ILLINOIS -- A 65-year-old woman has been sent to prison for 18 months for probation violations after pleading guilty to abusing more than a dozen dogs and cats.
Will County Judge Richard Schoenstedt originally sentenced Elizabeth Brown to probation, but sent he to prison Jan. 6.
Brown, whose address is sometimes listed in court records as Joliet Township, Paxton and Ashkum, was arrested Jan. 25, 2008, by Will County police and charged with felony cruelty to animals.
Just days before her arrest and on one of the coldest days of that year, humane society investigators and Will County police seized 18 starving dogs – pets owned by Brown – from two locations. Most were in an unheated barn in Manhattan Township, and the rest were being kept in the yard of an empty house owned by Brown on Loganberry Lane in Joliet Township.
When the authorities arrived that day, the animals were starving, thirsty and dirty. One dog had lost part of an ear to frostbite, and another had a baseball-sized tumor and glaucoma. Authorities later removed 10 cats from inside the same unoccupied Joliet Township home. At the time, the house was not heated.
(Chicago Tribune - Jan 27, 2010)
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