Two dogs are recovering after being taken from a home and thrown off a highway overpass.
Three-year-old lab/beagle mix Sadie and two-and-a-half-year-old pure bred Akita Thor were reportedly stolen from a home on Lemoyne Avenue Monday afternoon. The dogs' owners said there were a total off five dogs outside in a fenced-in backyard.
"Somehow somebody got our dogs, and next thing I know I get a phone call that they've been thrown over the 680 bridge, onto Midlothian," said owner Jaime Jones.
"It was raining dogs, let's put it that way. The dogs came down and that's all we saw was two dogs coming down off a bridge," said witness Linda Lesko.
"Neither one of them could move at first. They were like unconscious. I thought the one was dead," said witness Gene Malovec.
But miraculously, cars swerved and stopped to avoid hitting the dogs. Boardman police and Mahoning County humane agents responded to the scene.
And Sadie and Thor were taken to Animal Charity in Boardman to get checked out by the vet.
"Both are doing pretty good for right now. Our vet did recommend that they do go get x-rays, just to make sure that nothing else is medically wrong with them," said humane agent Kyle Ziegler.
This is the latest in a recent rash of animal abuse cases in the Valley. Witnesses said they saw two men in a blue van who they believe threw the dogs off the bridge.
But even if they're caught, the most they'll face is a second-degree misdemeanor charge of animal cruelty and possibly a theft charge.
"To me my dogs are just as much my kids as my kids are. So I absolutely think that we should have stronger laws for that, absolutely," Jones said. "They're both very loving dogs, I mean that's what we keep getting told even by the vets here that they were being loving, even after the fact that they just got thrown over a bridge."
"And that's what should happen to them. They should be thrown off the bridge," Lesko said of the perpetrators.
Police are still looking for the suspects, and anyone with information on the van or the suspects are asked to call police.
Click the video player below to see an interview with witnesses and humane agents from Animal Charity removing the dogs from the scene.
