SUDBURY — Steven Lashbrook was a bit confused on Wednesday morning when he received a message from a former neighbour, asking if he could stop by with this dog.
“He wouldn’t say why” he wanted to bring the dog by, Lashbrook said. “I found that a little suspicious … we don’t hang around.”
Still, he didn’t mind watching the dog because “Chico is the biggest sweetheart you’ll ever meet.”
As it turned out, Chico, a muscular white bull terrier, is the dog whose vicious treatment in two videos circulating online has captured the attention of the entire city.
The videos take place in a cluttered apartment. The first shows a young woman appearing to force feces into the animal’s mouth after it apparently defecated on the living room floor. The second shows the woman screaming at the dog about eating “the cats’ food” as she repeatedly punches the dog in the head and face while it whines in pain and cowers on the floor.
It is not known exactly when the videos were recorded, nor by whom.
Lashbrook didn’t know any of this when he received the morning message. He said he’s not really friends with Chico’s owners. They used to be neighbours, he said, and would often have playdates with their dogs.
Before the owner arrived at Lashbrook’s home with the dog, the 25-year-old Laurentian University business administration student went onto Facebook. That’s where he came across the two videos, which had begun to be shared widely.
And that’s when he made a decision. Once that dog was in his custody, Lashbrook decided, it wasn’t going anywhere else, unless it was with police. He certainly wasn’t going to give it back to the owners.
“Honestly, I was disgusted” by the videos, Lashbrook said. “I can’t comprehend how someone could do that.”
The next thing he did was phone Greater Sudbury Police. When the owner arrived and handed the dog over, that’s when Lashbrook laid it out for him what was going to happen.
“I told him I’d contacted the police and I wasn’t going to be giving him his dog back,” Lashbrook said.
He said the owner didn’t believe him at first, and kind of laughed, but Lashbrook made it clear: The dog wasn’t going to be returned to his care.
Besides just being a decent human being who hated seeing an animal abused, there was another reason Lashbrook reacted as he did. He said he felt somewhat responsible for Chico, explaining that when a friend of his was looking at selling her dog, which it turns out was Chico, Lashbrook put her in touch with his then neighbour, who was looking for a dog.
He said what he saw in the video seemed out of character for the person he knew.
“Never in a million years would I have thought they would be beating the dog,” Lashbrook said.
He said he’s happy to have been able to help rescue the dog from a bad situation and he “hopes the charges stick.”
Greater Sudbury Police and the OSPCA are working jointly to investigate the case, according to a post on the Sudbury OSPCA Facebook page.
A man, 20, and a woman, 18, were arrested Wednesday and charged with one count each of animal cruelty. Police are refusing to release their names.
They were not held in custody, but released on a promise to appear, partially, GSPS said today, because the cells at police HQ were full after a massive drug sweep yesterday. That sweep was part of Project Kronic, a joint operation of Toronto Police Service, York Regional Police, the OPP and GSPS.
And finally, after seeing videos of the animal being abused, here’s a happier image of Chico. Lashbrook provided this short clip of his girlfriend, Venessa Armstrong, giving Chico a well-deserved belly rub.
- Sudbury.com