A Waynesboro General District Court judge sentenced a 41-year-old Waynesboro woman to 60 days in jail on Friday for abandoning a pet dog authorities later had to euthanize.
Judge William D. Heatwole convicted Tonya Washington, 41, of the 400 block of North Augusta Avenue, on animal cruelty and abandonment charges. The charges stemmed from a Dec. 14 phone call to police about a 2-year-old pit bull left chained in the backyard of a vacant, neighboring house.
When police arrived at the house, they found the emaciated dog, chained to a tree in the backyard, said Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Camblos.
In photographs taken by police, the black-and-white pit bull, “Tip,” stood in an inch of snow with his head hanging low. Officers later discovered the chain, attached to a choke collar, had embedded itself into the dog’s neck, Camblos said.
Authorities said they found the dog lying in the snow, not in a nearby travel carrier that held baseballs frozen inside two inches of ice.
When veterinarians removed the chain, they found a gash too big to suture, authorities said.
“It’s like somebody took a knife and scooped out the muscle,” Camblos said. “The dog was so aggressive about everything that had happened to it that [veterinarians] couldn’t get close to it.”
In an interview with The News Virginian’s media partner, NBC 29, a neighbor of Washington’s, Letrecia Mathis, described the night her husband found the dog.
“We thought they had moved and we assumed they took the dog,” Mathis said. “That somebody would treat an animal that way, it breaks your heart.”
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