Thursday, July 23rd 2015, 10:50 pm
A woman is accused of kidnapping her neighbor's dog and killing it after it allegedly chased her own animals. The woman worked at an animal shelter, and investigators say without anyone's permission she brought in her neighbor's dog and euthanized it.
“She stole a dog and then euthanized it using Fatal Plus,” Pontotoc County Assistant District Attorney James Tillison said.
Authorities charged Marteen Silas with animal cruelty and larceny. The dog was a white pure bred Siberian Husky.
“It was a dog she knew belonged to some other person,” Tillison said. “She got that dog, removed it from the area of where she and the neighbor lived that owned the dog, and then took it to another location where it was euthanized.”
Silas was licensed by the state as a certified animal euthanasia technician and worked at the Pontotoc Animal Welfare Society.
Court documents state she took the dog to the shelter "utilizing her certification and drug registration outside the scope of her employment" and told other employees "not to tell anyone that she euthanized her neighbor's dog."
Animal cruelty is not an unusual crime, but larceny of an animal, if it's valued at more than 500 dollars, is a felony.
“I can tell you this is the first one I’ve filed in my career,” Tillison said.
Both charges are felonies. Each carries no more than five years in prison and a fine no more than $5,000.
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