[symple_googlemap title=”” location=”Avocado Way, La Sierra Ave. ” height=”300″ zoom=”13″]
A woman accused of neglecting more than three dozen pit bulls near Lake Mathews, allowing the dogs to starve and go without water for weeks, was arrested Wednesday in Las Vegas and is now awaiting extradition to California.
Kim Settle Gallegos, 60, of Riverside was located and taken into custody without incident by investigators from the Inland Region Apprehension Team, whose members include FBI agents and U.S. Marshals. Gallegos was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on a fugitive warrant.
The defendant is charged with 38 felony counts of animal cruelty. She’s one of three people implicated in the case. Another woman, Christian Dixon, remains at large. Her brother, 39-year-old Carl Robert Dixon, the canines’ owner, was not charged.
He was arrested last May 9 by Los Angeles police for drug trafficking, preventing him from returning to the rented property on Avocado Way, just off La Sierra Avenue, where the 38 dogs were housed.
An anonymous tip about possible pet abuse prompted the Riverside County Department of Animal Services to send an animal control officer to check the home on July 20, 2016.
Of the 38 canines found at the location, 11 had succumbed to malnutrition and dehydration. Two other dogs died after being rescued, despite the efforts of veterinary staff to save them, according to department spokesman John Welsh.
“This was one of the worst cases of abuse we had seen in a long time,” Department of Animal Services Cmdr. Chris Mayer said. “These dogs were left in shameful conditions. Some were in such bad condition, they died of starvation or from the extreme heat. Even some of our most veteran officers were shaking their heads at the total disregard the owners showed toward these poor animals.”
The surviving dogs, ranging from eight months to 10 years old, were all extremely weak, with protruding rib cages, Welsh said.
Because Dixon was locked up in the Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles at the time and could not reach the dogs, he was not held criminally responsible. According to jail records, he was released in September after being sentenced to probation.
Dixon was among a dozen people who addressed the Riverside County Board of Supervisors in September 2013, when the board was debating whether to implement an ordinance mandating that all pit bulls in unincorporated communities be spayed or neutered, with only a few narrow exceptions.
Dixon told the board at the time that “there are people out there trying to do the right thing” with respect to breeding pit bulls, and owners shouldn’t be stigmatized.
The dogs seized from the Avocado Way property were eventually nursed back to health and put up for adoption at the county’s San Jacinto Animal Campus.
— City News Service