Bags of dead dogs discovered on side of the road in south Bakersfield

CALIFORNIA -- Marley's Mutts Animal Rescue is hoping to find answers after a volunteer said she made a horrific discovery.

Teresa Maston said an online post led her to find bags with 18 dead dogs inside them along the road.
Zach Skow, executive director at Marley's Mutts, said he and Teresa wanted to follow up to see the validity of the posts.

 

Maston said she went to the East Pacheco Road near Cottonwood Road with the person who posted the information Tuesday morning.

Over a dozen dogs were found along E. Pacheco Road and two dogs were found along Cottonwood Road.

Maston took 23ABC to the site where the dogs were presumably dumped.

Authorities were notified by 23ABC and Animal Services officials were walking through the area with Bakersfield police.

Many of the dogs had collars, but all were in different stages of decomposition. 

Sgt. Joseph Grubbs with the Bakersfield Police Department said a Craigslist post stated that animals involved in fighting were dumped along the side of the road.

On Monday, the information Grubbs received was the dogs were abandoned in the area of White Lane and Cottonwood Road.

Animal Control officers came out Tuesday to take the remains.

Grubbs said that there was a large deceased dog that appeared to have been involved in a fight that had been dumped.

Skow said that there's two feelings he has seeing all of these bodies, "One part of me, which is the old me, is focused on justice and vigilante, but the practical part of me is, 'How can we apply what we're learning today to fix Kern County to show people what's happening?'"

"We want people to love their animals," Skow said.

Grubbs said officers will investigate the body of the large dog and the bag it was found in to see if there's any evidence that can be traced back to someone involved in the fighting.  He went on to explain that some of the dogs could have died from Parvo or any other disease and just dumped, but the larger dog appeared to have died as a result of fighting injuries.

Skow said he's never seen this many animals dumped on the side of the road at one time before, "It's rather strange and ominous."

Grubbs said you don't have to dump your dead animals on the side of the road, you can take the bodies to the Animal Shelter on South Mount Vernon Avenue. You can leave them there for free.

Grubbs also said that it's illegal to fight animals and that you should contact authorities if you know of any fighting going on.

(KERO-TV 23 - Jan 7, 2014)