Texas: Authorities searching for person who is poisoning dogs in Mauriceville

TEXAS -- Whoever fatally poisoned seven dogs in a Mauriceville subdivision this past week is "really sick" but probably will never be caught and even if arrested likely won't be prosecuted.

"The problem is from the prosecution standpoint and gathering the evidence, if nobody sees somebody poisoning the dogs, 'What can you do?'" said Jefferson County Assistant District Attorney Anne Manes.

Bob Johnson and Toby Keith, which survived being poisoned

Eight dogs in the Greenwood Acres subdivision were poisoned with strychnine, said Orange County Deputy Rocky Bridges said. One, a 7-year-old miniature schnauzer named Toby Keith Johnson, survived.

Wanda Babineaux, whose 8-month-old puppy Sally was poisoned, has "no idea why somebody would do that."

Wanda Babineaux and her dogs

Her five other dogs somehow avoided getting sick.

"It takes a cruel person to intentionally do something like that," Babineaux said.

Manes said most of the time poisoning animals in a neighborhood is done secretly, but she worries that this person or group of people have a different agenda.

"It sounds like somebody who is really sick," she said. "Somebody who is working his way up to something human."

It is a third-degree felony in the State of Texas to "intentionally, knowingly or recklessly" administer poison to an animal. Manes said anyone who is caught faces up to two years in state jail per case brought against them, but that is still far off for the Orange County sheriff's Office.

Rocky Bridges, a Deputy Sheriff with Orange County, talks about
where strychnine comes from as he looks something
 up in his copy of the Texas Penal Code book.

A sign is staked in the ground next to the stop sign turning into the subdivision asking anyone with information about the poisoning of the dogs to contact the Orange County Sheriff's Office and The Southeast Texas Humane Society is offering a $1,000 reward for anyone with information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person.

(beaumontenterprise.com - January 26, 2013)