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Maywood IL Dogfighting Ring & Daycare Busted: Kids & Dogs at Risk

by Mary Richard | September 25, 2009 at 03:36 am

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Police in Maywood, Illinois arrested three people this week for running a dogfighting ring out of a garage, while a licensed child care center was being run from the home beside it.

Nine battered and abused dogs were rescued from the Maywood daycare and two nearby homes, and some have undergone emergency surgery. One dog, just an 8-week-old puppy, had it's eye ripped out, another had it's leg twisted backwards.

There was blood over the floor and on a car in the garage. Puppies were housed in a cage covered with feces and urine, without food or water. The Police raid of dogfighting ring was caught on video .

"All the dogs that we got yesterday were in horrific condition, this is as bad as we've seen," said County Sheriff Tom Dart.

The garage was just 10 feet away from a swing set that the daycare children played on. One of the arrested was the day care operator's husband. The wife denied any involvement with the dogfighting ring.

Dart said when they arrived at the home at 2101 S. Third Ave. 10 daycare children were being watched within the home. Illinois Deptartment of Children and Family Services said the day care was licensed since 2004.

They had received complaints about dogs before, but on the four occasions they checked, the dogs were nowhere near the children. The homeowner's daycare license has now been surrendered to DCFS. The dogs and dogfighting equipment were located close to where the children were cared for in the day care area.

The very equipment used to train these dogs to kill was being kept in the garage right behind the house," Dart said. "Also in the garage were syringes, medication, bite sticks and harnesses used in dog fights," the sheriff's office said in a release. "The chest of the dog found in that garage was shredded from a recent fight and its penis was bitten almost completely off.

What was done to these dogs is inexcusable," Dart said. "This was done in the name of gambling and greed and no area seems to be immune from its influence - we see it in rural farm areas and inner cities. Unfortunately, we're also seeing more and more kids exposed to this kind of lifestyle.

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Karl Gotthardt - albertacowpoke

at 03:58 on September 25th, 2009

Makes me sick to see animals abused like this. There has to be harsher punishment for these abuses.

Amy Judd

at 07:12 on September 25th, 2009

This is so sick; makes me so sad to read this. How anyone could be so cruel to animals is beyond me.

FitzLemon

at 08:50 on September 25th, 2009

In my opinion, people like those men, deserves life jail. No excuse for torture!!!

Barbara McPherson

at 09:25 on September 25th, 2009

Of course these dogs and other animals deserve better protection. The people who torture them should be shunned by society, but money talks. How many will boycott football games that Michael Vick plays with the Philadelphia Eagles?

FitzLemon

at 09:38 on September 25th, 2009

Well, i only can talk from myself: I boycot all that its against animals. Sure that money talks, and also because people sometimes are a little out of brains. For me money never talks, because first are the animals

Mary Richard

at 06:25 on September 26th, 2009

Oh my, this just gets worse. They've upgraded charges on one of the men, he had a video showing a man setting fire to a dog. How could anyone do that?

mmk341 (not verified)

at 08:31 on October 7th, 2009

This makes me so angry...these people don't even deserve life in Jail they deserve to be tortured the same way the dog were tortured. Makes me so sick to my stomach! I would love to run into one of these people on the street!