Presa Canarios abandoned in home, two dead
South Bend, IN (US)

Incident Date: Wednesday, May 11, 2011
County: St Joseph

Disposition: Alleged

Alleged: Antione Allen Murray

Case Updates: 1 update(s) available

Its wide-open mouth is frozen in time as if it died inside this tiny doghouse desperately gasping for air.

Stench wafts in layers around the house at 2513 Westmoor St., where the black rotting carcass of a Presa Canario dog discovered two weeks ago has yet to be removed from the side yard.

"It smells bad," says a neighbor who declines to give her name. "It smells real bad. Somebody needs to get over there and remove it."

When South Bend Animal Control supervisor Kim Lucas responded May 12 to a neighbor's phoned tip that dogs were alive in the abandoned home, she found two brindle Presas in the living room feeding off a dead third Presa.

"There's no way to tell how that dog died," Lucas says, "whether it starved to death or whether the other two killed it."

She adds that the two "cannibalizing" Presas were also found emaciated and likely survived on water that spilled from a broken pipe in the house.

The room, like the house, is overwhelmed with dog feces and trash.

"There were several empty dog food bags," Lucas says. "The basement -- wall-to-wall was covered with feces."

Lucas, along with police officers, then went outside for a look around the yard.

"We smelled the dog," she says of the Presa decomposing in the small igloo-style dog house under a tree in the side yard. "We didn't know it was there."

The carcass of the second Presa found dead on the property was still there Wednesday, decomposing and -- according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website -- ripe to attract rats and mosquitoes carrying disease.

According to Lucas, the responsibility to remove the dead carcass from the grounds falls with the owner of the property.

The Lincoln Way West offices of Renew Inc., listed as owners of the property at 2513 Westmoor, were closed Wednesday afternoon. No one from the government-subsidized firm was available to comment on when, or if, the carcass would be removed.

Nobody can pinpoint exactly when Antone Murray, the last known occupant of the house and presumed owner of the Presas, left the premises and his four dogs behind.

Police searching the home recovered a shotgun along with shotgun shells.

Mail addressed to Murray, including one envelope from Renew Inc., sits in the mailbox.

Neighbors say it's been "at least a month" since he was last seen on the property, while one neighbor said, "He may have left with his girlfriend."

"We have no idea what happened to him," says Bill Sykes of the Michiana Animal Alliance, who pulled the two surviving Presas out of the house and relocated them to the South Bend Animal Control shelter, where they are currently being treated and fed.

Both dogs are extremely friendly. A reporter walking by their cage at the shelter was greeted with wagging tails and licks to the hand.

"He had the dogs cooped up," Lucas says. "One jumped the fence, and he put that one in the house."

The house's squalor is similar to the conditions found last month at 310 E. Indiana Ave., where a young pit bull was discovered lying dead in a dresser drawer on the floor of an enclosed back porch.

Necropsy results revealed that the animal died of starvation and dehydration.

The dog's owner, Joseph Ewing, allegedly left the pet pit bull behind after he was evicted from the Indiana Avenue property April 4.

Ewing, 25, is now serving four years in prison following his guilty plea in February to a felony count of maintaining a common nuisance stemming from his arrest in June last year on marijuana and drug paraphernalia possession charges.

Prosecutors also charged Ewing with misdemeanor animal neglect for leaving the brindle pit bull just shy of 2 years old locked in filthy conditions with no food or water.

If convicted of animal neglect, Ewing could face up to one year in county jail and $5,000 in fines -- a sentence that could be set to run consecutive to his current term.

In an online petition that generated more than 8,000 signatures, animal welfare groups called for Ewing to be charged with felony animal neglect.

However, police and prosecutors say the law limits prosecution to misdemeanor charges in cases where an animal was neglected but not physically abused.

Through the Michiana Animal Alliance, Sykes is working with other animal groups to get laws rewritten so prosecutors can hit pet owners with felony charges for leaving animals behind to starve in squalid conditions.

Sykes is hoping Murray will wind up facing felony animal cruelty charges over the way he left his Presas to fend for themselves.

"The one left (dead) in the house," Sykes says, "was already so cannibalized that all (Lucas) could do was retrieve pieces, which she did for evidence."

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