This happened in Richmond, CA. Which is not too far from me. My friend brought this article from the paper in for me at work today. I sat and cried while I read it. There are some pictures (nothing graphic) in the article.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/bay-...ws/ci_14335107
Richmond landlord charged in attack that nearly killed tenant's small dog
Chocolate, batwing ears perked slightly beneath the oversized plastic cone sheathing Taz's head. Dewy, sightless eyes bulged in fright as the 9-pound miniature pinscher strained to place the large things moving just a few feet away -- friend or foe?
Saul Hernandez forgives his beloved pet's sudden insecurity, and his squeals of pain when he chews once-coveted treats. And how he now runs into walls. And he forgives him for the monolithic vet bill, which led to the overdrawn checking account.
But what does etiquette dictate when someone, without obvious procovation, smashes in your dog's head with a tree branch?
"I don't know what I'm going to say to her," said Hernandez, clutching the shivering pup in his Richmond living room. "That's the thing. Rent is due. But I feel like she's put us in this situation."
Contra Costa County prosecutors charged Hernandez's landlord, 65-year-old Sharon Sayler, with two felony counts of animal cruelty Wednesday, saying she nearly beat Taz to death last week in the backyard of her four-plex, then left him in a cinched garbage bag inside her car's trunk overnight before attempting to dump him.
"She just didn't like him," said Richmond Detective Sgt. Lori Curran, normally tasked with murder and robbery investigations. "She didn't really express why."
Sayler, who declined a jailhouse interview request, calmly and politely discussed with Curran how, in her own words, she "beat his little head in" with a cut, 4-inch diameter section of tree branch, but couldn't easily articulate why.
Sayler lives on one end of a tidy row of four attached apartments across the street from City Hall, in the North and East neighborhood. The Hernandez family lives on the opposite end, sharing a fenced backyard with her and the other tenants. Both Saul and girlfriend Felicia Minor commute; she to San Leandro and he to a sink-manufacturing job in Pittsburg. Kids Rio, 2, and 1-year-old Sienna, go to a nearby relative's home during the day.
About 6 a.m. Jan. 28, the family bundled up the kids and hustled out the door. Saul let the dogs in the yard, as he does every morning. Only when they returned home that evening about 8 p.m., fresh from Sienna's first birthday party, did the couple discover that they'd miscommunicated, and nobody let the dogs back in.
They quickly found their Chihuahua, Franky, in the yard, but no Taz. They asked the neighbors, who saw nothing.
Hernandez remembers seeing his landlord unloading groceries. He thought it odd that she darted inside as they pulled up, leaving some of her bags on the stoop.
"It was weird, because I went over and knocked on her door, but she wouldn't open it," Hernandez said. "She just talked through the peephole."
After circuitous conversation, she told him she had "disposed of him." Incredulous, he asked what happened. She simply asked how much the dog was worth to him, and walked a way a few minutes later.
Hernandez called the police, but Sayler would not answer the officer's knock, Curran said. He took a theft report and left, advising the family to check with the local animal shelters.
"The hardest part was Friday morning," Hernandez said. "Rio is really attached to Taz. He came downstairs and started crying and screaming. 'Daddy, where's Taz?' "
Daddy didn't know. The family glumly packed up for another day of work, but Saul lasted less than an hour before realizing he was too preoccupied to last the day. So he drove home, checking with animal shelters and canvassing the neighborhood in search of Taz.
He stopped at a gas station at San Pablo and McBryde avenues about 2 p.m. Before filling up, he saw Sayler's blue Ford Taurus drive past, heading east on McBryde. He jumped in his car and followed her up the hill to a trailhead for Wildcat Canyon Regional Park.
Hernandez watched her don rubber gloves. "She opened the trunk. I saw a green recycling bin with a plastic bag in it."
Hernandez called to her, and she closed her trunk, got back in her car and drove away. He followed her, on a looping, half-hour chase through the region, on the phone with police dispatchers most of the way. Eventually she parked in a rear lot at Doctor's Medical Center San Pablo and speed-walked inside.
Police arrived, and received permission from their supervisors to open the trunk. Inside the twist-tied plastic bag they found a near-lifeless dog.
"His face was all swollen," Hernandez said, "and his eye was bulging out. It looked like a ball of blood."
Felicia had arrived by then, and they rushed Taz to an emergency vet in Berkeley, whose preliminary report indicated "malicious head trauma and attempted suffocation" as the source of the dog's ailing. The couple spent thousands to keep Taz alive, but took him home against the vet's advice because they ran out of money.
Police towed Sayler's car but could not find her. She walked home, Curran later learned, when she appeared in the Police Department lobby to leave a message for an officer who called over the weekend. Curran arrested her on the spot.
Hernandez still doesn't know the extent of Taz's neurological damage. He is at least partially blind, and he no longer barks.
Taz's tail wagged, feebly, for the first time Wednesday.
"His spirit is broken," Hernandez said. "I don't know what we're going to do."
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Originally Posted by Catty1
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