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Aug 29, 2023

Humane Society director could get arrested for saving dog in Alabama

The latest breaking updates, delivered straight to your email inbox. The call to save a dog in danger may land a director of the Greater Birmingham Humane Society under arrest and started a political

The latest breaking updates, delivered straight to your email inbox.

The call to save a dog in danger may land a director of the Greater Birmingham Humane Society under arrest and started a political tug-of-war between the mayor and police chief.

The Greater Birmingham Humane Society (GBHS) was notified about the pitbull, Abner, and went to Tarrant to check it out.

They could see he was in bad shape and left a notice on the door, then came back day after day and witnessed Abner getting closer to death. The garage was filled with feces, and he had no water.

They asked Tarrant police to get a warrant so they could enter the unlocked home and save the dog.

“They told me they would have to talk to a supervisor," GBHS director Allison Black-Cornelius said. "And I got a call later that day saying that the supervisor had not approved the warrant. That's when I realized that probably in that conflict, the animal might, you know, not make it.” So, the director told the animal control officer to go inside and get the dog anyway. Now, she fears she could be arrested for that call.

She said, “I learned on Sunday afternoon that I could possibly have been arrested. So, on Monday, I was fairly concerned.”

The Tarrant police chief said he's waiting to see if the district attorney will file any charges against anyone in this case.

The mayor is defending the humane society's action and said if anyone from GBHS is charged with a municipal crime, he'll pardon them, and if facing state charges, he’ll lobby for those charges to be dropped.

But Black-Cornelius believes if they'd waited one more day, Abner wouldn't have survived, adding, “In a situation like that, we just chose the life of the dog.”

He's severely underweight, but the humane society says he seems to be happy to be cared for.

“(He is a) really sweet dog given his condition and given I don't know how long he was in there, but it looked like a long time," Black-Cornelius said.Abner has a long road to recovery.

“It had fungus on its pads that was about a quarter inch to a half inch long," Black-Cornelius said. "So that shows you that it hadn't been standing up, hadn't been walking.”