Guilty: Man With Skeletal, Dying, and Dead Dogs in Backyard Convicted

Corques Lamar Johnson Found Guilty of Cruelty to Animals After PETA Discovers Starved Animals, Decomposing Remains

For Immediate Release:
June 27, 2017

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Today, Corques Lamar Johnson pleaded guilty to three out of six counts of cruelty to animals that he had been charged with earlier this year and was barred from owning any dogs for 18 months. The plea comes after two PETA fieldworkers made a horrifying discovery on his property last November: three dead dogs—one kept inside a dark wooden-and-wire-mesh box only inches away from his dead littermate, another chained to a plastic doghouse, and a third whose decomposing remains were found later in a garbage can—as well as five survivors in urgent need of veterinary care.

A necropsy report on the three deceased dogs revealed starvation and dehydration as the cause of death in each case. Of the five survivors, three were severely emaciated and none had access to food or water. One of them had been confined to a tiny box, resulting in severely atrophied muscles. PETA worked with the Halifax County Sheriff’s Office and Animal Control to remove the dogs from Johnson’s property. Photos are available here.

“Nothing will undo the immense suffering that these dogs endured over a long period of time,” says PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. “While this sentence is unusually light for a case of this severity, PETA will monitor the situation and urges Halifax County to prevent future similar cases by following the lead of Enfield, Roanoke Rapids, Scotland Neck, and Weldon and banning 24/7 tethering of dogs, which often leads to neglect.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—notes that dogs who are chained outdoors spend their entire lives eating, sleeping, and eliminating in the same few square feet of space. Chaining dogs deprives them of the social interaction that they need as pack animals, which can make them aggressive and nearly three times as likely to attack. Furthermore, dogs left outside in the summertime can be eaten alive by flies, fleas, mosquitoes, and other parasites or even suffer and die of heatstroke.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.