Columnist Mary Mitchell spotlights dog deaths in Austin

Animal cruelty is against the law.

Let’s start there.

If you witness someone who is torturing dogs and cats, treat that person like he or she is harming a helpless child and call 911.

This may seem like unnecessary advice, but it isn’t.

A few weeks ago, someone stole a 7-month-old German Shepherd out of a yard in Austin, and three days later the dog turned up dead — its head in one trash can and its body in another.

Needless to say, the dog’s owner was devastated.

“They took the dog to fight a pit bull and chopped the dog’s head off,” he told Mitchell.

The heinous act has struck such terror in this community; the owner asked that I not use his name.

“People around here are scared. The kids around here know that they are fighting dogs back there all the time,” the man said, referring to a vacant building in the 5400 block of West Van Buren.

According to the Chicago Police, someone walking in the alley in the 5400 block of West Gladys last Monday discovered the body of the decapitated dog in a trash can.

“We are hard-working citizens of Chicago and somebody can steal my dog and cut my dog’s head off and nothing is being done about it,” the dog owner told me.

“That is frightening. If they will cut off a dog’s head, they will cut off a person’s head.”

A police source in the Austin area told me that within the past eight months, officers have recovered at least 10 dogs from the same vacant building this owner believes his dog was taken to. “I’ve reached out to representatives of CAPS [Community Alternative Policing] and residents,” the police source said. “There is only so much we can do. We need people to come forward and no one has come forward.”

To read the rest of this powerful piece, click here.