Charleroi woman charged with animal cruelty after dog discovered in the freezing rain with no shelter

By KRISTIE LINDEN
Assistant Editor
klinden@yourmvi.com
A Charleroi woman is wanted on a warrant for cruelty to animals after police found a dog in her backyard in the freezing rain with no shelter.
Charleroi Regional Officer Howard Rider was called to the 200 block of Oakland Avenue Jan. 6 for a complaint that a dog had been outside for several days without shelter, food or water.
Rider stated it was 36 degrees and it had snowed with freezing rain earlier that day, he wrote in the affidavit of probable cause.
Initially, Rider said he couldn’t see any animals outside and knocked on the door several times until someone eventually answered, the complaint states.
The woman who answered, Shelly Washington, said she was at her daughter’s house. Her daughter is Tyra Shaquela Washington-Gilbert, 30.
Washington told Rider her daughter wouldn’t be available to talk until 10 p.m.
When asked why the dog was outside, Washington said her daughter’s friend left the dog there and the dog snapped at Washington-Gilbert, so she doesn’t want it in the house, the affidavit states.
The officer wrote in the complaint that Washington was being confrontational with him, so he went to a next-door neighbor’s house to see if he could view the animal from another yard.
“Once I got into the backyard, I could not see or hear any animals (at Washington-Gilbert’s address). While I was there, a woman opened the second-floor window and said, ‘Why are you looking at my property from over there? You were already on my property,’” Rider wrote in the affidavit.
Rider told the woman he had not been on her property before and asked her to meet him downstairs to talk.
When he met the woman at the front door, it was Washington-Gilbert.
“She stated that the dog bit her and she was not having it around her kids,” Rider wrote.
Washington-Gilbert told police the dog wasn’t hers, but belonged to a man she knows and she called him several times to get the animal.
Rider asked for permission to enter the backyard to determine if the dog was dangerous and told Washington-Gilbert he would see if the Animal Control Officer could help relocate the dog from her house.
“I observed a small white dog standing curled up against the side of the house,” Rider wrote. “There was no shelter or even an overhang of the roof for the dog to have protection. I could see that the dog was so wet due to the snow and freezing rain and that water was dripping from the animal. Once the dog saw I was there, it began to cry and wag its tail.”
Rider said the dog was tethered to a led attached to a prong collar around its neck and not connected to a harness it was wearing. He asked Washington-Gilbert for an old blanket to wrap the animal in and she came back with a leash saying she’d let the dog be inside her bathroom until Rider got the dog removed from her home.
The dog barked as Washington-Gilbert tried to put the leash on and she claimed it tried to bite her, but Rider said the dog was not aggressive and allowed him to take the tether off the prong collar and attach a leash.
“The dog did not want to go with Washington-Gilbert, but after some coaching he went in. I advised Washington-Gilbert that I would call the Humane Officer and be back,” Rider said.
The officer returned with a Humane Officer and got the paperwork done for the dog to be removed from Washington-Gilbert’s home, the affidavit states.
Washington-Gilbert was charged with cruelty to animals and two counts of neglect of animals —failure to provide shelter or protection.