A Brentwood woman was accused on New Year's Day of starving her husband's two puppies to death while he spent most of December in the Duval County jail on a charge of domestic violence.
Pamela K. Hicks, 44, was arrested on counts of cruelty to animals, disorderly conduct and making threats. Police had been to her home on West 26th Street on the evening of Jan 1, 2005 to accompany her husband as he gathered his belongings and moved out.
William Hicks, 47, was prevented from being on the property by an injunction and had been released from jail four days earlier.
Officers found the two black mixed-breed puppies in a rickety wooden shed behind the house. Sunday, their bodies remained in the open-air cage, one with its head tucked under the other. A container was near the animals, and a filthy, half-empty bowl of water was about a foot outside the cage.
"She was mad at me," William Hicks said in a phone interview. "She didn't have no concern for those dogs. ... It just hurt me to know they died like that."
Pamela Hicks said she did not want to get near the dogs because she was afraid of them, the arresting officer wrote in his report. She said she didn't want to feed them, adding, "They are not my problem," according to the report.
When an officer tried to detain her, she pulled away and tried to push him away, the officer wrote.
William Hicks said he and Pamela had been married for two years. No one answered knocks at the door of the home on Sunday. Neighbors declined to comment.
"My wife got to a point where ... I don't know, she had a funny character," Hicks said. "Sometimes she was all right. Sometimes she was ... " He stopped talking without finishing the sentence.
"I got all my stuff and left," he said. "The police were still there when I left."
A spokesman for Duval County Animal Control could not be reached for comment to help clarify why the animals were still in the yard.
Jacksonville Sheriff's Office spokesman Rick Wood said: "The animal owner would have a responsibility to properly address the disposal of the animal within the law."
William Hicks said he couldn't be on the property without permission, and his wife was in jail. He said he would ask a family member to take care of the problem. Neighborhood MapFor more information about the Interactive Animal Cruelty Maps, see the map notes.
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