KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The mystery behind a dog dumping incident has been solved — and city employees are to blame.
Last week, five dogs were found in four garbage bags in the woods in Kansas City north.
The city’s animal control department assigned a special investigator to look into where the dogs came from. One was microchipped. Another had a rabies tag. The clues led the investigator to the owners and discovered the dogs had been picked up by the city.
A city spokesman said when pets die, their owners call 311 to report it. A crew will respond and pick up the deceased pet, take it back to the shelter and the body will be cremated. However, in this case that didn’t happen. According to city spokesman Chris Hernandez, the workers simply dumped the dogs in the woods and now they’re facing major consequences.
“The end result of what happened is still being investigated,” Hernandez said. “We don’t know why they did this, but I can tell you that leadership here at City Hall, including the city manager are very upset about this, and disciplinary action is expected up to and including possible termination.”
Hernandez said the employees are not new employees and it’s unknown if they’ve dumped animal carcasses before.
FOX 4 first reported the story on March 13 when Shannon Obrien filed this report:
Illegal dumping is such a big problem in Kansas City that the city has a department devoted to stopping it and punishing those who do it. Now those code enforcement officers are working with animal control because of what was found in a bunch of dumped trash. There were dead dogs wrapped up in garbage bags and dumped along a secluded road.
“Dumping them in a plastic trash bag somewhere obviously speaks to the character of the individuals involved,” Keith Wiedenkeller, Humane Society of Greater Kansas City President and CEO, said.
Officials in Kansas City are on the hunt for whoever dumped five dogs in an area on Northeast Oakridge Road on Wednesday.
“This is a tragic and obviously unusual situation, and that’s why the city is responding to this with investigators from both animal control and from codes enforcement,” KCMO spokesperson Chris Hernandez said.
The dogs, pit bulls and pit bull mixes were found wrapped up in plastic bags. Two of them were in in the same bundle and discarded like trash.
“You certainly have to wonder how they were treated when they were alive,” Wiedenkeller said.
Animal control officers say there were signs the dogs had been abused.
“The first thing that came to my mind is perhaps they were used for fighting and at least for someone’s amusement,” Wiedenkeller said.
Because illegal dumping is such a problem in the city, code enforcement officers place cameras in secluded areas known for dumping.
“There were cameras in this area, they were taken and hopefully that will help this investigation,” Hernandez said.
If the dog dumpers are found and the city can prove the dogs were abused, tortured or mutilated while they were alive, the dumpers could be slapped with a felony and spend 4 years in prison if convicted.
“Dogs and cats can teach us a lot about being human beings and to treat them that way and to allow it, I think that diminishes all of us,”
One of the five dogs was micro chipped, so city officials are hoping that and the surveillance pictures can help them with this investigation. If you know anything about the dumped dogs, please call KCMO Animal Control at 816-513-9809.
