$8,000 Reward Offered After Missouri Beagle Is Found Skinned Alive

A beagle is shown in a file photo. Holly Kellum/Epoch Times

Warning: This story contains descriptions that some readers will find disturbing.

An $8,000 reward was offered about information in the case of a beagle that was found skinned alive in Missouri, said police on Oct. 3.

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The dog was left inside a home while its owner was away, police said.

Neosho police Lt. Jason Baird told The Associated Press that the dog’s backside was removed from its tail to its neck. The skin around the top of its legs was also removed.

A resident said they saw the injured dog appear in a forested area in late September, Baird said, noting that the unnamed beagle appeared to be in distress when officers discovered it.  The decision was then made to put the animal down, AP reported.

The dog may have escaped its owner’s home via an unsecured door.

Authorities in Missouri say the animal was in obvious distress. City of Neosho

“It takes a truly callous person to skin a dog alive and it’s completely heartbreaking to imagine the suffering this dog endured,” Amanda Good, Missouri state director for the Humane Society of the United States, said on the group’s website.

She added that the human society now hopes “this reward will encourage anyone with information about this terrible crime to come forward, not only to help seek justice for this animal, but also to ensure the safety of the entire community.”

The Humane Society said it is offering up to $5,000 in the case while local residents chipped in the remaining $3,000, AP reported.

Neosho police Lt. Jason Baird said the animal was found in Neosho, Missouri. Google Maps

Entire communities are affected by such crimes, the Humane Society said, adding that there is a well-established scientific connection between animal cruelty and violence towards people.

“Studies establish a clear link between animal cruelty and many other crimes, from narcotics and firearms violations to battery and sexual assault,” it said.

Those with information about the case can call the Neosho Police Department at 417-451-8012 or The Newton County Sheriff’s Department at 417-451-8300.

Facts About Crime in the United States

Violent crime in the United States has fallen sharply over the past 25 years, according to both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) (pdf).

The rate of violent crimes fell by 49 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the FBI’s UCR, which only reflects crimes reported to the police.

The violent crime rate dropped by 74 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the BJS’s NCVS, which takes into account both crimes that have been reported to the police and those that have not.

The FBI recently released preliminary data for 2018. According to the Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January to June 2018, violent crime rates in the United States dropped by 4.3 percent compared to the same six-month period in 2017.

While the overall rate of violent crime has seen a steady downward drop since its peak in the 1990s, there have been several upticks that bucked the trend. Between 2014 and 2016, the murder rate increased by more than 20 percent, to 5.4 per 100,000 residents, from 4.4, according to an Epoch Times analysis of FBI data. The last two-year period that the rate soared so quickly was between 1966 and 1968.