NEWS AND COMMENT-COLOMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA USA: This ranks as one of the most disturbing animal abuse stories that I have read about over 14 years of reading animal welfare stories.
Caroline Dawn Pennington, 47, has been arrested after she turned herself in this month. The reason why she was arrested is because investigators responded to a report that there was a “smell of death” coming from her home.
Richland County deputies visited the house. When they went into the house, they found 28 dogs and 2 cats inside cages and crates. There’d been deceased sometime and their bodies had decomposed. They believe that the animals had starved to death inside their cages and that Pennington had allowed it to happen. After they’d died, she did nothing about it. Just left them there inside her home. Extraordinary. Perhaps she was not living there. Perhaps it is certain that no one was living in this property as no one could.
We are told that the animals must have been living in their own waste because their decomposed bodies were on faeces and urine. They removed the animals. Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said that the experience was appalling and heartbreaking.
He said that Pennington was a person who had been entrusted by the community to care for animals and to rehome them. Allegedly she betrayed that trust and betrayed the trust that the animals gave to her. He said that it is one of the worst cases of animal cruelty that he has ever seen.
To compound matters, Pennington was employed by the Kershaw County Humane Society. She was booked (I take that to mean arrested and charged with animal cruelty) at the Alvin S. Glen Detention Center.
Comment: of course, there is not much that can be said. It is a horror story. It paints a picture of extreme cruelty. I feel that if someone has it in them to allow 30 animals to starve to death inside their cages that they have to have some sort of mental health problem. This is entirely abnormal behaviour. It would not surprise me if she used her mental health as a defence in her prosecution should that come about.
Below are some more pages on animal cruelty if you have the stomach for it.
