Officers: Woman Left Dog To Die, Another Clinging To Life

Animal Control Officers say a Chattanooga woman left a dead dog covered in clothes for several days and did not feed another animal.

These officers tell us that they're finding more and more dead animals inside homes and in backyards across the city. This time they tell us that even after they ordered the woman to bury the dog, she ended up just throwing him in the garbage.

McKamey Officer Nick Wilson says he found two pitbulls this weekend at a home on Rogers Road in East Brainerd.

Wilson says one dog was clinging to life, another had been dead for quite some time.

"It was obviously from starvation, the dog was basically just skin and bones," Wilson says as he describes the dead dog's condition.

Wilson says the pit bulls' owner, Sonkia Boyd, said she did not know the dogs were living in such bad conditions.

"There was some clothing piled up on the ground which had been tossed over the dogs remains, the complainant advised the dog had died three days prior to our arrival," Wilson says.

And when the officers did arrive on the property they asked Boyd to bury the dog behind her house, but Wilson says several hours later they received a disturbing anonymous phone call from a neighbor.

"All they did was bag the dog and chunked it into the garbage can to be disposed of with regular everyday trash," Wilson says.

So Wilson placed Boyd under arrest, charging her with felony aggravated animal abuse. He also took the second pit bull into custody.

"You can't leave an animal suffering like that, obviously this dog hadn't had food and water in quite some time," Wilson says.

But Wilson but tells us the surviving dog had to be euthanized today.

"Could this have been prevented?" we ask. "Oh yeah I mean this could have been prevented if she had been found early enough on just proper food and water on a daily basis could have protected this dog from an early death," Wilson responds.

Wilson says without the anonymous phone calls they probably would have never found these dogs.

He also tells us they receive an overwhelming number of phone calls regarding pit bulls - some that involve pit bull fighting rings. On Friday on NewsChannel 9 at six, we're going to take an in depth look at those fighting rings in Chattanooga - we'll tell you where they are and what's being done to stop them.