Calling it one of the worst cases of animal neglect he's seen in recent years, Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones said a woman throwing away trash found the dog, still in the cage and covered in its own feces, at 3298 Reflections Pointe in Hamilton.
“It was pretty awful. I was pretty upset,” said Hali Kern, who discovered the dog in the garbage bin of her apartment complex. “Why are you going to have a dog if you’re going to treat it like that?”
Kern said she was horrified by what she discovered.
“There was a dog crate with a sheet over it. I was just throwing my trash out and I knocked the sheet over and there was a dog just lying in there,” Kern said.
"The dog had a collar and a tag with a phone number that led us to the owner, Katie Schmuck," stated Kurt Merbs, deputy dog warden supervisor.
Jones said Schmuck, 21, of Hamilton admitted to leaving the dog in the care of a friend, Jacob Goodwin, 21, of Hamilton, while she was gone for a week.
Goodwin told the deputy dog warden he checked on the dog about three times but never let it out of the cage. Both Schmuck and Goodwin said the dog didn't eat for about three weeks. Goodwin said he found the dog dead on his third visit to Schmuck's residence.
"He took the dog, dead in the cage, across the street to a dumpster and disposed of it like common trash. The photos are just gruesome," Sheriff Jones said. "It is disturbing what this poor animal endured. It basically starved to death in a small cage lying in its own excrement. I honestly think it's in a better place now."
Schmuck and Goodwin were both charged with cruelty to a companion animal.
(WKEF ABC 22 - Feb 12, 2016)
No comments:
Post a Comment