Authorities in Lamb County announced a public meeting for Wednesday evening, 6:00 pm in the Littlefield Ag Center, to address reports of animal cruelty.
Officials aim to calm the nerves of community members, Sheriff Gary Maddox said.
Tara Wegner, with the Littlefield Animal Project, said she was notified of reports of “quite a few bad situations.”
“Several dogs were reported missing,” she said. “Capturing them, holding them in a house, hogtying and killing them in a brutal manner.”
“There was a report of a dog tied to tracks, alive when the train hit it,” Wegner said.
“What I would like to tell the general public is that their pets are safe, and I can tell them that we don’t have any type of epidemic of someone going around and just killing pets at large,” said Littlefield Police Chief Albert Garcia.
Maddox said the three major cases were all blown out of proportion.
He said the report of the dog tied to the tracks was most likely a dog that was tied up at a home that got loose and the rope could have become entangled in the train tracks. Maddox said there was no way to confirm the original report that the dog was tied to the tracks.
Another case involved a Chihuahua that was found wounded in someone’s backyard. Maddox explained that it may have been the result of the small dog entering the backyard, and getting attacked by the homeowner’s dogs.
Littlefield Police said a veterinarian examined the small dog’s body and determined the dismemberment was not caused by a knife-like object.
Maddox explained the animal cruelty reports have come in like a game of telephone.
“There is nothing substantiating any of this,” Maddox explained, adding that because the circumstances may have loosely aligned with the initial reports, residents associated the reports with an individual or group aiming to harm dogs in the community.
Littlefield Police Detective Pete Lara said he prioritized the animal cruelty reports to the top of his list.
“The first thing I did is I walked into the Chief’s office and I said ‘Chief, we’re going to have to work on this… I said I’m going to stop everything, and and work on this, and get to the bottom of it. If it is true, we need to get facts,” Lara said.
“We don’t know what to do to resolve this issue. We have a major ‘dog roaming at large’ issue,” said Garcia.
“We’re trying to get everybody to be aware of their animals,” Wegner said.
