Attorneys/Judges
| Prosecutor(s): | Zulma Delgado | | Defense(s): | Manuel Reyes | | Judge(s): | Nelson Canabal, Miguel Fabre |
80 animals hurled off bridge, most die
Barceloneta, PR (US)Incident Date: Monday, Oct 15, 2007
County: Barceloneta
Disposition: Acquitted
Persons of Interest:
» Julio Diaz
» Roberto Rodriguez
» Lucas Montano
Case Updates: 3 update(s) available
A judge on Feb 6, 2008 ordered the owner of an animal control company and two of his employees to stand trial for animal cruelty charges for the October massacre of about 80 seized pets that were hurled off a bridge.
Following several days of hearings, Superior Court Judge Nelson Canabal ruled there was sufficient evidence for Julio Diaz, owner of Animal Control Solutions, and the two employees to stand trial.
The killings of pets seized from housing projects brought revulsion around the world and triggered calls for tourist boycotts of this U.S. Caribbean territory.
"At last we are going to see justice in these killings," said Alma Febus, who investigated the case for the territorial government.
Diaz's attorney, Manuel Reyes, said he would appeal the judge's decision.
After the hearing, Diaz blamed the municipality of Barceloneta for seizing the animals and said he didn't know who threw them from the bridge. Only a half-dozen survived the 50-foot fall, some with serious injuries.
"I will no longer do any animal-related business in Puerto Rico," he said. "We are the only ones who have been blamed. We are innocent."
Municipal officials in Barceloneta, a town along Puerto Rico's north-central coast, said they hired Animal Control Solutions to remove pets from housing projects, believing that regulations banned them. Barceloneta officials said they understood that the company, which drove off with the animals in vans, would take them to shelters.
Instead, they wound up at the bottom of a bridge along a highway that runs between Barceloneta and San Juan.
During Wednesday's hearing, Angel Rafael Sierra recalled rushing home with his young daughters after learning that people were seizing pets at the complex. They found their beloved dog "Tuti" was gone.
Sierra testified that he got in his car and followed a white van, which stopped at a municipality building in Barceloneta. He said he could hear dogs barking but was prevented from seeing if Tuti was inside.
The next day, he discovered Tuti's body beneath the bridge.
"My daughters saw too," Sierra said. "They started crying."
An investigation by The Associated Press later showed that such brutal methods have been routinely used in the killing of thousands of pets and stray animals on this island.
Case UpdatesA Puerto Rican judge on Wednesday found a contractor and two of his workers not guilty of animal cruelty in a highly publicized massacre of dogs and cats seized from a housing project and hurled off a bridge last year.
Following weeks of testimony, Superior Court Judge Miguel Fabre ruled prosecutors did not show sufficient evidence to make a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, telling the court that investigators had no witnesses linking the trio to the pets' deaths in October.
A visibly relieved Julio Diaz, owner of Animal Control Solutions, and workers Lucas Montano Rivera and Roberto Rodriguez Ceballo shook hands with supporters outside the courtroom.
"This process has been a disgrace and justice was achieved. The only thing I have done is protect animals," said Diaz, who had repeatedly denied responsibility for the pets' deaths in press and court statements.
The three had faced animal-cruelty charges that carry maximum prison terms of nine years.
The killings of roughly 80 pets seized from a housing project in Barceloneta, a town along Puerto Rico's north-central coast, brought revulsion around the world and triggered calls for tourist boycotts of the tropical U.S. territory.
After Fabre's ruling, defense attorney Manuel Reyes Davila blasted the nearly yearlong investigation into Diaz and his company, calling it "shortsighted and biased."
Nearby, a few animal activists decried the ruling.
"This is a cruelty!" shouted Mery Donate Branches, bursting into tears.
Diaz and his two employees had earlier waived their right to a jury, saying finding impartial jurors would be impossible due to the heavy publicity surrounding the case.
The contractor has blamed the municipality of Barceloneta for seizing the animals and said he didn't know who threw them from the bridge along a highway that runs between Barceloneta and San Juan. Only a half-dozen survived the 50-foot fall, some with serious injuries.
Municipal officials in Barceloneta said they hired Animal Control Solutions to remove pets from housing projects, believing that regulations banned them.
Public prosecutor Zulma Delgado told reporters she did not intend to appeal Fabre's ruling. | Source: Associated Press - Sept 10, 2008
Update posted on Sep 10, 2008 - 10:05PM |
Three men accused in the killing of pets seized from a public housing project waived their right to a jury as their trial began Monday, saying heavy publicity would make it impossible to find impartial jurors.
Animal control workers in October took about 80 pets from the housing project in the northern Puerto Rican town of Barceloneta and allegedly tossed them off a bridge to their deaths. The killings brought revulsion around the world and triggered calls for tourist boycotts of this U.S. Caribbean territory.
Julio Diaz, the owner of an animal control company, and two former employees are charged with animal cruelty and have pleaded not guilty.
Manuel Reyes, a lawyer for Diaz and his company Animal Control Solutions, said a fair trial by jury would be impossible.
"This is a case that has received a lot of negative publicity and the general population that could be on the jury is already contaminated," he said.
Defendants Diaz, Roberto Rodriguez and Lucas Montano face maximum sentences of three years in prison. Prosecutors plan to introduce 21 witnesses. | Source: Associated Press - Aug 18, 2008
Update posted on Aug 18, 2008 - 11:43PM |
This much seems certain about the events of last October at three housing projects in this town near Puerto Rico's northern coast: Men working for the municipality entered the projects, rounded up dozens of dogs and cats that they said violated the housing authority's no-pets policy and took them away.
Wilma Gonzalez, 18, waits to have her dog, Pucha, inoculated at a Humane Society of Puerto Rico clinic near San Juan.
What happened next is less clear, but a lawsuit filed on behalf of 33 families claims that city employees and contractors drugged and brutalized dozens of animals and then flung them from a 50-foot-tall highway bridge into a weed-choked ravine and left them to die.
Witnesses say they found a pile of dog corpses and skeletons beneath the bridge, but the contractors have denied wrongdoing and city officials have denied responsibility.
News of the event became an international embarrassment for Puerto Rico and something of a vindication for animal rights advocates here and on the United States mainland who had long tried to draw attention to the plight of animals on the island.
Animal rights advocates contend that the inhumane disposal of animals was routine, with unwanted dogs, cats and even farm animals hurled from bridges, intentionally crushed by vehicles or butchered with machetes. Government nonchalance, they say, has allowed this to go on.
But only with the Barceloneta case, they say, did anything start to happen. It spurred threats of a tourism boycott, inspired the government to begin addressing more forcefully the issue of animal welfare and precipitated soul-searching among the Puerto Rican people.
"In our culture we have not addressed these issues because, probably, we did not think they were important," said Carlos M. Carazo, director of the animal disease division of Puerto Rico's State Office for Animal Control, in an interview in San Juan last month. "In Puerto Rico, we have so many issues to address, we haven't had the leisure time to think about animals. But this is probably the time to start thinking about it."
Puerto Rico, among United States territories, has long had a poor international reputation for the treatment of animals. There is no government program for mass sterilization or registration of pets and little animal welfare education in the schools. The island has only about a half-dozen animal shelters, and while municipalities are charged with rounding up strays, that duty has largely been ignored, government officials and animal advocates say.
Puerto Rican pet owners will often dump unwanted animals along roads or on beaches, animal advocates say. Roaming packs of mangy dogs are common in many towns.
One of the most notorious dumping grounds is a spit of land on the southeastern coast near the town of Yabucoa. It is known as Dead Dog Beach. According to animal welfare advocates, thousands of dogs have wound up there in the last decade.
"I've found dogs poisoned in the bushes," said Sandra Cintron, 37, an animal rescuer who lives in Yabucoa and drives to the beach every morning with a sack of dry food and jugs of fresh water for the shifting population of abandoned animals. "Sometimes they put them in bags and toss them in the jungle."
Ms. Cintron, whose volunteer work is supported by several Puerto Rican and international animal welfare groups, has been tending to the stray dogs at Dead Dog Beach since 2001. She has taken hundreds to be neutered and has found homes for dozens. She has named them all and keeps photographs of them in albums. Animal rights groups say that over the years they have been inundated with letters and e-mail messages from tourists offended by the stray dog problem.
One rights group in San Juan is the Save a Sato Foundation. The group's Web site explains that sato is slang for "street dog."
An e-mail message sent to the group by a woman who identified herself as Susan, was typical: "I visited P.R. a few years ago and was appalled and literally sickened by the homeless dog situation. I spent my entire vacation feeding stray dogs. The trip was miserable and horrible and I swore never to return and to tell everyone I knew about the experience."
A 2002 study by the Puerto Rico Hotel and Tourism Association estimated that the stray animal problem was costing the commonwealth about $5 million a year in lost tourism. "Numerous groups and conventions have canceled plans to hold meetings in Puerto Rico after observing the stray dog and cat situation," the report said.
Still, it was five years before the government acted.
"In Puerto Rico, nobody has taught our culture animal control and protection concepts," said Mr. Carazo of the animal control office, which was formed last year. "We are now beginning to address those issues."
Since the Barceloneta case, the animal control office has accelerated new regulations and guidelines for animal control specialists, shelters and law enforcement agencies on how to manage strays, adoptions, spay clinics and licensing.
Completion of the guidelines will result in the disbursement of $1.5 million in seed money to establish animal shelters in each of the commonwealth's 78 municipalities, said Wilma Rivera, executive director of the office.
The government has also created a program to educate two police coordinators in every region, who will train the rest of the police force in the proper handling of pet cruelty cases.
The commonwealth's tourism agency has also formed a committee to push for more government action, complementing an animal welfare committee that operates under the auspices of the hotel and tourism board.
Meanwhile, a group of lawyers is drafting more comprehensive animal protection legislation with stiffer penalties.
Still, animal welfare advocates are concerned that as the Barceloneta case wanes, the government's interest may flag. But Edilia Vazquez, director of the Save a Sato Foundation, said the Barceloneta case has unified the once-fractured animal welfare community.
"We realize we need to work with each other and keep the finger in the side of the government," Ms. Vazquez said. | Source: New York Times - Match 9,. 2008
Update posted on Mar 9, 2008 - 12:15PM |
References
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