Dog doused in gasoline, set on fire
Baltimore, MD (US)Incident Date: Wednesday, May 27, 2009
County: Baltimore City
Charges: Felony CTA
Disposition: Alleged
Case Images: 2 files available
Alleged:
» Tremayne Johnson
» Travers Johnson
Upcoming Court Dates:
» Wednesday, Dec 9, 2009: Arraignment
Case Updates: 6 update(s) available
A city police officer describes it as one of the worst things she's ever seen. A pit bull was set on fire in northwest Baltimore and no one was coming to to the dog's aid.
They've named her Phoenix, for rising out of the ashes. She would have been euthanized immediately, but a special fund at BARCS provided immediate, expensive care to keep her alive.
The one-year-old pit bull should not be alive after someone doused her in gasoline and set her on fire Wednesday afternoon.
"There's not one part spared. I've seen it on the back, on the tail on the ears. I've never seen it on the whole body," said Dr. Bonner.
A Baltimore City officer is credited with saving her.
"It was just cruel," said Officer Syreeta Teel.
Officer Teel and her partner were on their regular patrol in west Baltimore; when they got to Presberry Street, they saw a black cloud of smoke, which was coming from a burning dog.
"She was fully in flames. There were people around but nobody was doing anything, so I got out of the car, took off my sweater and started hitting her to put the fire out," Officer Teel said.
"You don't put dogs on fire. A dog is like a human being. They have feelings too," said a witness who asked to be identified only as Warren.
"It was just sad, because I've never heard a dog make this sound. This scream that he made, I've never heard before," Teel said.
Phoenix, as she's now called, came to the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter. A nearby veterinarian treated her burns and now she's off to a rescue.
Every person who worked on her says this is the worst case they've seen but Phoenix wants to live.
"The pads of her feet and burnt off and she's standing on them, walking to people and still wagging her tail," said BARCS Executive Director Jennifer Mead-Brause.
Officers got no information from the neighborhood but some tell WJZ the pit bull has been around before. The vet found puncture wounds, indicating a dog fight.
"We don't understand it. We can't imagine the kind of person who can do something like that," Mead-Brause said.
Police have not charged anyone and are asking any witnesses to give them a call with any information.
Aggravated cruelty to animals is a felony with the punishment being up to three years in prison.
Case UpdatesState’s Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy announced today that the Baltimore City Grand Jury indicted both Tremayne and Travers Johnson, 17, of S. Pulaski Street in a five count indictment charging animal abuse and cruelty.
Court documents allege that on May 27, 2009 Tremayne and Travers Johnson were responsible for setting a pit bull dog on fire in the 1600 block of Presbury Street. Police responding to a call in that block discovered a pit bull dog engulfed in flames. The dog, affectionately named Phoenix, was put down due to injuries while being cared for at an animal shelter in Pennsylvania.
An indictment is not a finding of guilt. An individual charged by indictment is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty at some later criminal proceeding.
Both Johnson brothers are being held at the Baltimore City Detention Center without bail.
An arraignment is scheduled for December 9, 2009 before the Honorable David W. Young, 227 Courthouse East. | Source: Baltimore Sun - Nov 13, 2009
Update posted on Nov 13, 2009 - 7:10PM |
There are new developments in a shocking animal cruelty case. A two-year-old pit bull was doused with gasoline, then set on fire and left to die in Baltimore City. The teenagers charged with the crime appeared before a judge Tuesday.
Derek Valcourt has details from court.
Defense attorneys tried to argue that since the twins were 17 at the time the dog was lit on fire, they should be tried as juveniles, but the judge ordered they be tried as adults.
In the city, they called her Phoenix. In May, the pit bull was doused with gasoline and then set on fire. An officer saw the dog on fire and ripped off her sweatshirt to put the flames out. But the injuries were too severe and she had to be put down.
Prosecutors say evidence led them to Travers and Tremayne Johnson, 17-year-old twin brothers, who they say are members of the 1600 Boys gang.
Their father refused to answer questions when he left the courtroom Tuesday, but prosecutors say crime cameras captured most of the chaos of the burning dogs and the twins running from the scene.
The case sparked outrage across the country and in Baltimore, led to the creation of an anti-animal abuse task force, chaired by Caroline Griffin.
"Everyone agreed this was an absolutely horrific crime," she said. "What impressed me is how seriously both the state's attorney's office is taking this and how seriously the court is taking this."
The twins both face charges of felony aggravated animal cruelty. If convicted, they could face three years in prison. | Source: WJZ - Nov 3, 2009
Update posted on Nov 9, 2009 - 4:52AM |
Corrections officers escorted the twin brothers into the courtroom together, the smaller one trailing just behind the other, their hands shackled behind their backs, their feet shackled at the ankles. Both wore blue jeans and white T-shirts. They looked younger than their 17 years.
The guards brought them into the sixth-floor room after most of the day's chaotic docket of drugs and violence had concluded and the spectator benches had emptied but for two women. The youths stood in front of Baltimore Circuit Judge Charles G. Bernstein to be arraigned on adult charges that they had weapons in their home on South Pulaski Street.
A spokesman for the city state's attorney's office sat in a jury seat.
A private attorney, Caroline Griffin, who serves as chairwoman of Baltimore's newly formed Anti-Animal Abuse Task Force, sat in the back and waited patiently for three hours until the twins, Travers and Tremayne Johnson, were paraded in front of the bench.
Griffin and the spokesman were there because the youths have also been charged as juveniles with fatally setting a pit bull on fire in West Baltimore in May. It was a case that attracted national attention, a reward that far exceeded those handed out for tips in murder cases involving humans and made a hero of a city officer who rescued the dog named Phoenix and smothered the flames with her sweater.
But the defense attorney, the prosecutor and the judge did not bring those topics up at the hearing, reserved exclusively for the young defendants to enter pleas in the gun case and have a trial date set for Oct. 13. Court documents filed in the gun case (they said they were not guilty) name them as suspects in the dog burning, which is scheduled for a separate juvenile hearing this month.
While Bernstein offered opinions on other cases before him Tuesday, there was no similar banter when the Johnson twins' turn came. They were represented by a public defender, but a private attorney will represent one of them. Both are being held without bail.
Tuesday was the first time the youths had been seen in public. Two relatives, including their grandmother, sat in back of the court and talked privately with the public defender when the hearing ended. Neither wanted to talk to reporters and simply shook their heads no as they walked down a courthouse hallway.
While the burning drew national attention and daily news updates - an animal rights group has posted on its Web site a personal plea to the prosecutor, Jennifer Rallo, to "vigorously prosecute" - the judicial proceedings have not generated sustained attention, in part because the brothers were charged in the secretive world of juvenile courts.
It's only now, with them facing adult gun charges stemming from a raid police conducted at their house after the arrest in the dog case, that details are slowly emerging.
The court documents filed in the gun case say the twins were seen "running out an alley with the burning dog" and that the "incident was captured" on police surveillance video. Police arrested them and then raided the family house on Pulaski Street where, according to authorities, they seized a loaded handgun hidden inside a rubber boot, a shotgun and a rifle.
Their 75-year-old father, in a previous interview, said the guns were his, not his sons', and that the twins had nothing to do with burning Phoenix.
Neither twin talked during the hearing; the judge simply entered the not-guilty pleas on their behalf and then made them fill out paperwork. "As soon as you sign, you are free to go, so to speak," the judge told them, knowing they were in handcuffs and leg irons and were definitely not free to go anywhere but back to jail and wait for their next appearance in court, the one everyone is anxiously awaiting. | Source: The Baltimore Sun - Aug 5, 2009
Update posted on Aug 6, 2009 - 1:11PM |
Two teenage twin brothers charged as juveniles with fatally burning a pit bull are being held without bail on new adult charges after police said they raided their Southwest Baltimore rowhouse and found guns and marijuana inside.
Travers and Tremayne Johnson, 17, are each charged with possession of firearms, marijuana and drug paraphernalia, according to police and prosecutors. Court documents say the two were suspects in the dog burning last month, and their father confirmed that they are charged as juveniles with animal cruelty in the case.
The death of the dog, which had been doused with gasoline and set aflame, attracted national attention, led to donations for a reward fund that grew to $26,000 and prompted calls for stiffer penalties in animal cruelty cases. Caregivers, who named the dog Phoenix, had to euthanize the animal because she had burns on 95 percent of her body.
Mayor Sheila Dixon and Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III held a news conference about the case, and the officer who found the dog on Presbury Street and used her sweater to put out the flames became a hero. The commissioner has said the animal might have been used in dog fighting.
Baltimore police announced the arrest of the youths June 8 in connection with the dog case but did not release their names because they were charged as juveniles. They canceled a news conference, saying they were conferring with prosecutors on the charges, and officials left open the possibility that the state's attorney's office might not proceed with the case. The youths were released to the custody of their father.
According to court documents, police raided the house in the first block of S. Pulaski St. on June 16 and filed adult charges against the twins two days later. Authorities did not divulge details of that raid and those charges until Thursday.
Details in the newly filed court documents say that detectives have a witness "who positively identified both Travers Johnson and Tremayne Johnson as the individuals who were running out of the alley with the burning dog." The documents also state that the "incident was captured" on police surveillance video.
Police said that when they searched the Pulaski Street house, they found three guns - a loaded .38-caliber Taurus handgun inside a rubber boot, a 20-gauge shotgun and a Marlin Firearms .30-.30-caliber rifle. In addition, police said they found a digital scale with a small amount of marijuana. | Source: The Baltimore Sun - Jun 26, 2009
Update posted on Jun 26, 2009 - 12:25PM |
The pit bull set on fire in West Baltimore last month might have been part of a dog-fighting operation, Baltimore's top police official said Tuesday.
Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said there were indications that dog fighting "may have been at the core" of the case, but he declined to elaborate.
There had been previous reports that the dog had bite marks on its body.
Police charged two teenagers over the weekend with setting the dog ablaze, but few details have been released as police and prosecutors pore over evidence. Prosecutors have declined to comment, but Bealefeld said he remains optimistic that the case will move forward.
"I understand there are still some concerns about some of the things that [prosecutors] are looking for us to do in continuing with the investigation, but I'm confident that we have the right guys, based on all that I've heard," Bealefeld said.
The case sparked anger and generated more than $26,000 in donations to find the culprits. Bealefeld said the community came forward with tips that helped police close in on the suspects.
"We got some information in the early stages concerning [the] possible identity of these guys, and then, based on a review of evidence from the scene, we were able to secure another witness who put us over the top," Bealefeld said. | Source: Baltimore Sun - June 10, 2009
Update posted on Jun 10, 2009 - 4:14AM |
Two Southwest Baltimore juveniles have been arrested for the burning of Phoenix, the pit bull, that spurred such outraged that an award fund reached $24,000, according to The Baltimore Sun story.
The dog was initially saved by a Baltimore City police officer, Syreeta Teel, who was on routine patrol May 27 and saw the dog in the middle of Presbury street. She put out the fire with her sweater and has since been called a hero by her superiors and many in the community.
The dog suffered burns on 98 percent of her body and had to be euthanize last weekend.
No word on what lead to the arrest. | Source: Baltimore Sun - June 8, 2009
Update posted on Jun 8, 2009 - 2:07PM |
References« MD State Animal Cruelty Map
« More cases in Baltimore City County, MD
|
