There have been allegations of Chesterfield Co shelter pets being beaten with pipes and being shot to death for awhile. To my knowledge, this is the first time anyone has gone on the record about it:
FOX Charlotte’s Morgan Fogarty asked [former shelter worker Frankie] Bowers, “Did you ever see them, during your time there, ever lethally inject an animal?” Bowers says, “No. Never. Not one time.”
Bowers says he was instructed to feed, water and clean the animals. It was also his job to take a front-end loader over to a dirt area across the street and cover the dead animals with dirt. He found one dog still alive. Bowers says, “The dog was still sitting up on it’s haunches and it was bleeding everywhere and they done (sic) shot him in the head a few times and the dog was still alive and he was in misery and you could tell he was suffering.”
He says the cats didn’t fare any better. “If they (the county employees) couldn’t catch them (the cats), they would hit them over the head to knock them out.” Fogarty asked, “With what?” Bowers reply: “A pipe.”
Mr. Bowers was ordered by the court to work at the shelter in January. He says he witnessed the shootings of dozens of shelter pets.
What’s described here is a long term pattern of extreme cruelty in my opinion. It is not an isolated case of poor judgment. It is not attributable to a lack of funding. Nor can it be excused by claiming a lack of education. These are deliberate, repeated acts of violence against defenseless pets who were completely reliant upon the ACOs for care.
If these horrific acts were the “standard of care” at the Chesterfield Co shelter, it seems incredible to think the Sheriff did not know about it.
A piece in the NYT reminds us:
In addition to a growing sensitivity to the rights of animals, another significant reason for the increased attention to animal cruelty is a mounting body of evidence about the link between such acts and serious crimes of more narrowly human concern, including illegal firearms possession, drug trafficking, gambling, spousal and child abuse, rape and homicide.
I sincerely hope SLED does a thorough job on this investigation. Clearly, the community deserves to know the whole truth.