Justice For Phantom - The Hudson Dog
- by: Lyn Gorka
- recipient: The Marlborough District Attorney's Office and The MSPCA
Please read the article below on the "Hudson Dog" that suffered a cruel death, just months ago in Massachusetts. Lyn Gorka has been working on this case for over 8 months without any justice being served. We need your help. This petition is to bring justice for Phantom, so that this dog did not die in vain. Animal abandonment is on the rise everywhere. As real estate agents, all too often we see pets that have been abandoned at properties by their former owners. Some are found malnourished and barely alive and some are not so lucky. When a home or condo goes into foreclosure, the owner needs to be held responsible for the welfare of their animal and not get away with abandoning their pet in a closed home to die like Phantom. There needs to be a stricter law passed that brings owners of abandoned pets to justice. We need your signatures to re-open this case with the Marlborough District Attorney's office and gain the support of the MSPCA. Please sign this petition, as we are the only voice that Phantom has now. Let's work together to prevent the unnecessary death of another animal. Ignorance is no excuse to the law.
MetroWest Daily News Article: Hudson Dog Deserved Better
At some point in late spring or early summer, Phantom must have realized he'd been left to die.
How many times did he look around and wonder what could have happened to the people he loved?
How many days or weeks of waiting patiently, listening for familiar footsteps, the sound of the door opening, did it take before the yellow Lab gave up hope?
Police reports don't deal in speculation. Only information provided by witnesses, suspects, "persons of interest" and the kind of evidence they believe will hold up in court.
So all I can tell you is the last time anyone reported seeing Phantom alive was in mid-May.
And on Sept. 7, police were called to a Hudson condo complex because of a foul smell in the building.
"The overwhelming odor within the apartment, based on my training and experience, was that of decomposition," Hudson Patrolman Christopher Vezeau wrote in the first of several reports on the case. "I then found the deceased animal on the floor of the bathroom, and it appeared that the animal had been deceased for quite some time."
"That kind of a death is a long, drawn-out death," said Marlborough real estate broker and animal-rights activist Lyn Gorka. "How could there be so many people who didn't hear that dog fight for its life?"
But neighbors said they never heard barking, whimpering or scratching sounds.
The unit is owned by a bank, but the identity of the previous tenant was no mystery.
Police tracked him down and interviewed him, as well as a woman who had been in his and Phantom's life for several years.
Their names are being withheld because, after weeks of police investigation and consultation with the Middlesex District Attorney's Office, neither person is being charged in connection with the death of the 2-year-old Lab.
It was within the realm of possibility there was some sort of miscommunication on who was ultimately responsible for the dog.
So, "there was insufficient evidence to support criminal charges," Hudson Police Chief Richard Braga said last week, when the case was finally closed.
"We wanted to make sure we had all our I's dotted and T's crossed," Braga said of the lengthy investigation.
"We did everything we could to find out who was knowingly responsible for the dog's death."
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