Small Dog Burned to Death at Connecticut Beach, Groups Offer Big Reward To Hunt Down Killer

Stock photo of a miniature Schnauzer. Lilly M/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0 ept.ms/2Bw5evC

A miniature Schnauzer was set on fire and burned to death in West Haven, Connecticut, on Friday, July 5 in what has been called a “horrific crime.”

Fire and police first responders arrived around 10 a.m. on July 5 after someone reported an “uncontained fire in the Sandy Point Beach parking lot,” police Sgt. Charles Young said in a statement.

Keith Flood, a fire marshal at West Haven Fire Department, told the New Haven Register that when his team first arrived to put out the fire they didn’t know what had been set on fire, and only found out the following day.

“It’s a really horrific crime,” Flood told the Register.

According to Young in his statement, after the fire was put out, they found that it was a small dog, “possibly a 1-year-old mini Schnauzer with cropped ears and a cropped tail” that had been killed in the fire.

Local station WTNH reported that the dog may have been abandoned at the parking lot after it was set on fire, and an accelerant may have been involved, according to an initial investigation.

Jim O’Brien, chief of the West Haven Fire Department, said that whoever had set the dog on fire “obviously needs help,” the Register reported.

“Who does that?” he asked. According to the news outlet, O’Brien himself owns a dog, a yellow Labrador.

“I can’t imagine who would want to do that to a defenseless animal,” he expressed to the Register, adding that anybody who does such a thing is “sick.”