Georgia: DeKalb county shelter caught starving dogs; another dog died squeezed in cage door

GEORGIA -- A charity known nationally for saving the lives of dogs and cats faced questions about how it failed to properly feed starving dogs in the DeKalb County Animal Shelter.

 Lifeline Animal Project manages the DeKalb shelter, but it's the police department that's responsible for investigating animal cruelty cases.

 

 

On March 31, officers seized two emaciated dogs named Jax and Cicely. The next day they brought in a dog named Chaos, also severely malnourished.

But according to a DeKalb police memo, when detectives stopped by two weeks later to weigh those dogs, they found they "looked physically the same as we had last seen them."

 

There's a reason for that. Lifeline employees failed to feed them properly.

"How could an animal shelter forget to feed starving dogs?" we asked Lifeline Animal Project founder Rebecca Guinn.

"To be honest with you, Randy, this was an awful mistake," she admitted. "And we take full responsibility for it."

In his memo, DeKalb police Sgt. T.C. Medlin said he told Shelter Director Kerry Moyers-Horton on April 13, "I don't think they are being fed."

He said Moyers-Horton replied, "Don't generalize; they are being fed, just maybe not enough."

Large signs went up on the cages requiring the dogs be fed 3-4 times a day.

But detectives were not convinced.

They pulled surveillance video of the 400 section of the shelter where dogs involved in bite cases or animal cruelty are quarantined until their criminal cases are resolved.

 

Video surveillance showed that employees failed to feed the dogs - all of the dogs, not just the ones involved in criminal cases - leaving them to starve for MORE THAN 2 DAYS. Even after police made the complaint, the dogs again were starved.

Lifeline Animal Project Founder Rebecca Guinn calls it a "miscommunication" among employees.

Finally, the worst part of the story is that one of the dogs that had been seized from its owner and then again starved by the shelter.... he tried to wedge himself out of his cage, got stuck and died a horrible, painful death. He probably tried to escape because they were starving him. Who is going to get charged with animal cruelty for his death??

 

 

 

The owner of the pit bull named Chaos told the reporter he was wrong for leaving his dog inside the garage of an abandoned house (to be a guard dog apparently), but that if he's been charged with animal cruelty, why isn't the shelter staff also being charged with animal cruelty (good point).

 

(Fox5 - May 26, 2016)