Many Chicagoans and Americans in general absolutely love their dogs, so much so that news of NFL quarterback Michael Vick's conviction on dog fighting charges (ESPN) caused national outrage. But even though Vick served his time and astoundingly was hired by another team, the gruesome crime persists throughout the country.
Two Maywood men who pleaded guilty to felony dog fighting charges, 38-year-old Martez Anderson and 27-year-old Lance Webb, were sentenced (ABC 7 Chicago) to two years and 18 months (respectively) in prison.
Anderson and Webb operated a dog fighting ring consisting of three homes in the suburban neighborhood (ABC 7 Chicago). Nine dogs were removed from two of the homes, while Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told reporters that dog fighting took place "a few feet" from where children played in a third home, which also housed a home daycare center.
It gets worse.
One of the rescued dogs was a puppy whose right eye was missing, likely used as a "bait dog" for training purposes, as Dart explains in the article:
"These dogs obviously have been thrown into fights. And why somebody would ever do any of the stuff is hard to imagine. And now we're having a hard time figuring out why they did this and these dogs were not fed. It's just been horrible."
The article provides some more details about the other dogs' injuries, if you care to learn more. The copious amounts of graphic evidence likely prompted the defendants' Illinois criminal defense attorneys to recommend guilty pleas.
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Illinois Dogfighting Law (Animal Law)
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Dogfighting Fact Sheet (The Humane Society of the United States)
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Find a Chicago Criminal Attorney (FindLaw)
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