5 Dogs Die After Being Left In SUV
Here’s another story which shows how little value the justice system places on the life of a dog, or in this case dogs.
In Greenville, SC. the worth of 5 dogs who died after being left in a hot SUV comes down to 19 hours of community service per dog for the offenders.
A mother and her son have been sentenced to 96 hours of community service after five dogs were found dead in their sport utility vehicle. Another dog in the SUV is in poor health.
Multiple media outlets reported that 44-year-old Tanya Dunlap and 20-year-old Chris Dunlap of Hoquiam, Wash., were convicted Tuesday of ill treatment of animals after waiving their right to an attorney and a jury trial.
Authorities say the dogs were in the Dunlap’s SUV, which was parked Monday at a state Employment Security office.
Tanya Dunlap told the judge she was trying to solve a problem with the employment office in Washington, while her son was supposed to watch the dogs.
South Carolina Human Society spokeswoman Kelly Graham called the punishment a slap on the wrist.
Convicted of ‘ill treatment’ of an animal? Five dogs died, that is not ill treatment, it’s murder. I am just astounded that you can kill five dogs and walk away with community service.
* Bo loves to go for rides.
That is unbelievable! It just shows how much the “justice” system values the lives of all creatures. This just disgusts me! The community should involve working at animal shelter or something similar.
I still remember the police dog that was “forgotten” in a car at home while the owner napped, did yard work and went out to dinner. Has anyone every been properly punished for these acts of cruelty or stupidity?
I’m not surprised this meager “punishment” happened in South Carolina. While searching the internet for dog friendly places to live and vacation I found that South Carolina was deemed the least dog friendly state in the nation, one point being it’s lax animal cruelty laws.
how about they shouldn’t be allowed to own any more dogs? what were they even thinking having 6 dogs left in a car anyways? That’s outrageous..and sad that the mother wants to blame it on her son.. :sigh: what a slap on the wrist.. or a slap in the face to animal advocates everywhere!
I’m so disgusted, I can’t even speak!!
people do it to their kids too…and don’t even get the 19 hours of community service.
problem is the word RESPONSIBILITY means nothing. I have noticed that an awful lot of younger people are “Mr. Rogers special”.
Thing is those of you out there with kids, remember to teach THEM to be responsible too, thewy will become responsible adults. Don’t teach them as kids? There will be more of this type of callous and irresponsible behavior. I wonder how old the son who was suipposed to be “watching” the dogs?
Punishment? I don’t know exactly what would be fitting, I would think about a year of weekends working in the local animal shelter might br some pennance.
I DO leave my girls in the car, with the windows open and with a pan of water, but never for more thn 30 minutes at a time. To take dogs WITH you (especially SIX) when you KNOW you will be tied up with GVT red tape…that’s just irresponsible and even more…PLAIN STUPID.
Our court system makes me want to puke. As I have said a million times I would like to not have have 1 minute with the offender but also with the ones that decide the hand slapping. I can tell you I would kill anybody that caused my baby’s death like that. Then again I leave her with nobody but her dad.
PUBLIC SERVICE!!!!??? PUBLIC SERVICE???!!!
How about confining the two to a hot SUV, windows up, in the heat???!! No justice.
Give me a gun
I’m not sure when this happened but based on the newspaper article (6/16) I assume it’s recent. I haven’t even seen this one in the news here. It’s been in the 90’s in all of SC lately, so I can’t imagine how hot that vehicle was. Even leaving all windows completely down is hot, but then you run the chance the dogs will jump out or be stolen, or the vehicle stolen with the dogs in it – I’ve seen several of those cases, don’t think it can’t happen to you.
And yes our laws here suck, but even if we have a potential stiff penalty for an animal offense, there are still judges who don’t believe the animals’ suffering is worth the penalty and give the minimum.
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH PEOPLE? AND the justice system! This is beyond unbelievable.
This is so sickening. People can be so stupid !
Gandhi said “a nation and its MORAL progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”.
Well, looks like we’re still in the STONE AGE!!!
how unfair? just community service? is that the worth of the lives of 5 dogs? what if it were 5 babies (human beings?) won’t the punishment be harder?
I thought animal welfare laws were stricter there than in India.
May God take the souls of the doggies in to his keeping and judge the people justly.
I’m with you, Jeff, but lets not kill them. We’ll just put them in an SUV and park it in the sun. Throw the judge in, too.
I can’t believe I just said this! But this unforgivable thoughtlessness and cruelty MAKES ME ANGRY.
The owner should be locked inside a hot suv sans air condition for the same amount of hours in order to experience what her wronged pet suffered.
It remids me of a case in Texas wherein a man was sued, and sentend to weekends in prison, so he could keep his job. He crime? Near starving a german shepherd to death.
We all know how much a standard shepherd should weight but this poor thing was lesss than skin and bones. Luckily it survived. The mans excuse was “Well its my kids dog, and they were suppoosed to be feeding it”
I loved the judged sentence. While he was in jail, he was sentenced to bread and water and NOTHING else.
Honestly, people will never learn. A few years ago, we had two toddlers die while left in a hot car for over 8 hours. The people responsible for them got a few years in jail.
Just this week, two kids ages 4 and 5 apparently crawled into the trunk of their parents car and died after about an hour. It was 88 degrees, the car was too old to have a safety latch on the inside. The case is being labeled as an accident for now but the police are investigating because the mother doesn’t seem quite as devastated as one would expect her to be.
And…I myself had to jump into a car full of kids once. The mother pulled up to a convenience store (on a hill) and left the kids in the car. The oldest might have been 3. The car somehow came out of gear and rolled down the hill backwards. I jumped in (got dragged several feet), stopped the car in the middle of a busy street, right before it backed into a brick building, started the car (keys were inside) and drove it back up the hill, telling the kid to NEVER, EVER touch the gearshift. I walked into the store, right past the mom who never even NOTICED what had happened.
Dogs or children…windows up or down..leaving them in a car is just never a good idea.
This is a country that holds so little value on the life of an animal. They are used and abused for entertainment. They are tortured to death in research. They are skinned, while often still alive, for their fur. Meat processing plants are another horror. It will continue to happen because not enough people care to step up and take action to end it.
I can’t believe just how stupid some people can be. I can’t even fathom leaving my dogs in a car or truck in the summer. As much as they love rides (my dogs), they don’t get to tag along unless I’m going to be in the car the entire time with the air on or windows open. During the summer I’ll take them along more at night. Very sad story and an injustice for the dogs.
COMMUNITY SERVICE???? How about Jail time? Banned from owning another animal? Come on now. Community service? I just cannot stomach that. These people TORTURED and MURDERED these dogs…and they get community service. I hope they feel terrible about themselves.
This makes me furious. Look what happened to Michael Vick with dog fighting. These people only get community service and the killed five dogs. Its not right.
OMD. I live in Charleston, SC and it has been SO hot in our state, I cannot believe anyone would leave their dogs in the car. It was 102 here on Monday. This is sick, sick, sick. These people should be locked up. They are responsible for 5 lives. I hope that Karma bites them in the you know what.
Grrrrrr….
This is so sickening when I read these kind of stories. I know the dangers of leaving your dogs in the car, especially during the hot heat of the summer. I can’t believe that no one saw these dogs in destress and didn’t find someone to locate the owner. I had a guy leave 2 of his dogs in a car once while he took his 3rd dog on a walk near our dog park we go to. The other park’ers and I realized that the man wasn’t just geting out for a min with the one dog but he took off to walk him. We called the local authorities and thank goodness it wasn’t that hot yet but they dogs definately looked like they were heading in that direction. The officer waiting, and those of us in the dog park waited to see what happened when the man returned. He took his other dogs out and brought them into the park and told the officer that he wouldn’t leave the other dogs in the car again while he walked his 3rd one. Of course all of us gave him glaring stares for doing that. I just hate that the justice system in this country is so unfair to animals when it comes to really cracking down on animal welfare and abuse cases. This is one reason why I am working on becoming a employee with ASPCA and taking photos to help educate the public more about all these differnet levels of animal abuse. Just because you aren’t fighting them, or leaving them chained outside doesn’t mean you aren’t abusing them! Ugh, I just can’t stand this kind of stuff. How is anyone going to learn if they don’t get a harsh enough punishement? Why do you think there are kids out there that do things to animals because they don’t have parents that raise them correctly to teach them how to properly treat people and animals. This just shows how to be irresponsible example for her son!
Absolutely criminal! And the community service is sad but laughable.
I’d like to say that my hubby and I observed a small little poofy white dog locked in its owners hot car at Lowe’s Home Improvement a few weeks back. The windows weren’t open even a crack! The poor little guy was panting something fierce, so we marched in to the store and reported this to the customer service desk. There were people from Lowe’s outside trying to spring the little dog out of the car oven when the owner came out. She got a blessing out from the manager who made her wait until the police and animal control arrived. They too, blessed her out, but sadly let her go with no more than a warning. Stupid woman….
Regardless of where this occurred, and that part’s a little fuzzy (SC or WA) it’s ridiculous…it’s cruel…and it’s criminal whether the murdering idiots received the proper punishment or not.
Their punishment should be to spend time in their hot SUV and if they survive follow it with jail time. Her son is lucky that she didn’t lock him in a hot vehicle when he was a child. Community service is a joke. What will they learn from it?
These sick, brainless people don’t even get a dog ownership ban?? Every dog owner knows,you can’t leave dogs in the car in the heat or cold???
They kill 5 dogs from their action and get off with so little.
Disgusted
C
HORRIBLE. HOW COULD SOMEONE DO THAT?
absolutely disgusting! to even hear the title of the story makes me sick and yet to actually read the story makes me sick with anger. my heart aches for those animals, all 6. why isnt negligence a more serious crime?!
I hope their community service is on the highway barefooted in the blazing heat, and if a car or truck “accidentally” hits them, OH WELL!
Clearly what we’ve learned from the “Justice” system is to just leave unwanted animals in hot cars to be rid of them.
This is a sick world.
Here is another story.
Seven More Dogs Die!!!
Here’s the story
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/191EDA28F711396D862575DF005870EC?OpenDocument
Please, leave your dog at home, even if it is only a couple minutes in the store!!
someone should make them sit in a hot car with no way to get out, see how it feels.
I agree with you all. How sad that we treat animal life as so disposable. I sincerely hope these people weren’t being cruel on purpose. But their actions were cruel, none the less. The other option is that they were stupid. It wouldn’t be right to make people prove that they were smart enough to own a dog, would it?
I’m trying very hard to be a Christian with this. I know that we are to love each other but are you kinding me!!!!! Eye for an eye!! Grrrrrrrrrrrr