The Indiana State Police has now entered the investigation into the heat-related deaths of multiple canines as they were headed to a Michigan City training facility at the end of July.
The Lake County Prosecutor’s office has enlisted the agency, ISP spokesperson Sgt. Glen Fifield said in a release Thursday afternoon. Because the investigation is ongoing, ISP had no further comment.
The Lake Station Police Merit Board held a special meeting August 30, but the minutes of that meeting weren’t readily available since the board doesn’t make them available until they’ve been approved at a subsequent meeting, Lake Station Clerk-Treasurer Brenda Samuels said Thursday. Lake Station Mayor Bill Carroll didn’t return a call for comment.
But Humane Society of Hobart Director Jennifer Webber said she’s “hopeful” at the turn of events.
“I think if the mayor hadn’t been sick that week, the response at the scene would’ve been a lot different, but he assured me that there would be an independent investigation and they would get all the evidence, and Lake County would take the steps necessary to see if any state or even federal violations occurred,” Webber said Thursday. “This is encouraging, because it was a really rough experience for our community.”
Webber said she was told the Illinois State Police may also get involved in the deaths of at least 18 dogs.
“All the outrage over what happened, it just goes to show you the kind of community we have here: one that wants to live humanely,” she said.
Nearly two dozen animals were housed in the separate cargo area of a box truck as it drove through Lake Station July 27. The vehicle was equipped with an air conditioning unit meant to keep them cool amid the day’s extreme heat, but the unit was broken. In a statement posted to Facebook in the early morning on July 28, the Lake Station Police Department wrote that the dogs were being transported from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to a training facility in Michigan City.
Webber and Lake Station Animal Control Officer Bill Wright identified the owner of the animals as Mike McHenry, the owner and lead trainer at FM K9, a Michigan-based company that supplies trained police dogs to law enforcement. The company’s website notes that McHenry has “over 25 years in the canine field and industry” and “10 years as a shift commander/supervisor in Law Enforcement.”
The driver stopped on Ripley Street in Lake Station after the dogs’ barking alerted him to their distress, according to the police statement, and alerted authorities after discovering that the animals were showing signs of heat-related illness. According to the police department, the air conditioning unit failed, causing temperatures in the cargo area to climb steeply until they reached deadly levels. It was, the statement said, “not an act of animal cruelty or neglect.”
The driver called McHenry, who arrived at the scene alongside personnel from the Lake Station Police Department and the Humane Society of Hobart. Some of the animals were already dead, while others showed signs of extreme distress.
When Webber arrived, she said, she asked McHenry for health certificates which establish temperatures safe for transporting the animals, and vaccination records among other documents. This, she said, was consistent with the Humane Society’s standard procedures.
When McHenry did not provide the documents, she announced her intention to seize the surviving dogs under the authority granted to her organization by Lake Station ordinances, which allow the Humane Society to impound an animal “that is reasonably believed to have been abused or neglected,” and “dogs without current license tags.” She planned to transport them to a veterinary hospital to receive emergency care, after which the Humane Society would conduct an investigation and return the animals after compliance was proved and any fines and fees were paid.
McHenry objected and refused to allow the Humane Society to transport the dogs. Police on the scene took McHenry’s side, Webber said.
Though the Humane Society had air-conditioned vehicles on the scene already, the animals were transported to two local animal hospitals by emergency medical personnel that arrived later, Webber previously told the Post-Tribune. Some of the animals that were alive when authorities arrived were later euthanized due to untreatable heat-related injuries.
Delaying the transportation of the dogs, Webber said, could have caused unnecessary deaths.
The animal rights organization PETA called on the Lake Station Police Department to recuse itself from any investigation, citing a potential conflict of interest involving the department’s chief and the dogs’ owner.
Anyone with information on this case is asked to contact ISP Detective Chris Eagles at 219-690-0043.
Post-Tribune reporter Alex Dalton contributed.
