Puppies neglected, 8 found dead
Rogers, AR (US)Incident Date: Thursday, Oct 25, 2007
County: Benton
Charges: Misdemeanor
Disposition: Alleged
Alleged: Keith Jarrell
A man will be charged with 17 counts of cruelty to animals after Animal Control officers removed nine dogs from his home Thursday.
Officials from the Rogers Animal Shelter, an area rescue organization and the Rogers Police Department took five adult dogs and four puppies from Keith Jarrell's rented home at 1002 S. Sixth St., City Attorney Ben Lipscomb said.
Officers searched for Jarrell, 49, on Thursday so that they could charge him. He also has two outstanding warrants for contempt of court, failure to appear and 10 pending counts of dogs at large, Lipscomb said.
Officials removed the animals from the home after receiving reports of a dead puppy in the residence's front yard, said Rhonda DiBasilio, director of the Rogers Animal Shelter.
The dogs, which were of a variety of mixed breeds, were taken to a veterinarian to be treated for mange and starvation.
The Animal Shelter had worked with Lipscomb to obtain the warrant necessary to take the animals from the home after repeated complaints from concerned individuals, she said.
Stacy Kiggins of the Homeward Bound Canines rescue said she called the city representatives to report the issue after hearing about it multiple times.
"When people know what I do and they see something like this, they tend to call me," she said.
When the group arrived at the home Thursday, they found a neglected litter of eight puppies. Only half of the litter was alive, and the dead animals were hidden in a basket in the garage, Kiggins said. The group found a total of eight dead dogs at the home.
The adult animals on the site often went without food, Kiggins said. Postal carriers and construction workers at the site of the nearby Heritage High School would often step into the yard to throw donuts and food scraps over the fence to the animals, she said.
The animals will be treated before determining whether they can be adopted out, Di-Basilio said, but they will not be returned to the home.
" This is quite a bit worse than what we normally see, " she said. " A couple of them looked like they weren't going to make it. "
Kiggins and DiBasilio agreed that the situation was worse than any of the animal removals they'd recently dealt with.
" I bet this is happening more than any of us realize, " Kiggins said.
Lipscomb estimated that his office sees between 15 to 20 animal cruelty incidents each year, with the rest filtering through the court system.
" This is the most counts of cruelty to animals charge that I've ever been faced with charging at one time, " he said. References
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