A veterinarian and an employee of a south suburban animal-care facility have been charged with animal cruelty after four dead dogs and nine seriously neglected dogs were found over the weekend, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said Tuesday.
Dr. Amardeep Sangha, owner of the Dolton Animal Hospital, is charged with five counts of misdemeanor cruelty to animals and eight misdemeanor counts of violation of owner’s duties in connection with animals at the hospital. The 54-year-old Sangha, of Naperville, was arrested Tuesday afternoon at the Sheriff’s Police headquarters in Maywood.
Also charged with misdemeanors is employee Sharon Cargile, 59, of Chicago. Cargile was taken into custody Sunday at the animal hospital, in the 15000 block of Lincoln Avenue.
Dart, standing outside the Animal Welfare League of Chicago Ridge, where the dogs are being treated, estimated the number of neglected and abused dogs his office comes in contact with is “probably in the hundreds.” The difference, he said, is they tend to be “isolated cases.
“I think this was just something, for reasons we may never know, the animals were not taken care of, to the point of neglect.”
Dolton police had a key to the facility and entered Sunday to drop off a stray, Dart said. They quickly determined something was wrong, went into the basement and “found three dead dogs in their cages and one in a plastic bag.”
Dart said seven of the neglected dogs were likely to bounce back but “it’s touch and go” for two of them.
Dr. Mark Kahn, a veterinarian at the Animal Welfare League, said all of the animals had been cleaned and their sores treated. The two most serious cases were put on IVs and were in the facility lobby Tuesday afternoon.
Kahn said all of the surviving animals were in cages covered in sores and their own feces. They also were starving.
“It’s not the worst I’ve seen,” he said, “but it’s very bad.”
Kahn said one of the worst-off dogs, a Staffordshire terrier mix, had ruptured mammary glands and looked older than her 3 to 5 years of age because of malnutrition.
The other, a black mongrel, had sepsis that was in danger of spreading beyond one of his forelegs, Kahn said.
Linda Estrada, director of the nonprofit Chicago-Ridge-based operation, said she couldn’t understand how anyone — particularly people charged with caring for animals — could allow an animal to starve.
“Starving to death is the worst,” she said. “I don’t know how anyone could eat a sandwich and not think of the animals that are starving to death.”
