Charges: Woman Kept Pets Locked In Rooms Until They Starved To Death
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – A 33-year-old woman in the north metro is accused of starving four of her pets to death after keeping them locked in separate rooms, unattended and surrounded by filth.
Kuarin Mary Lind, of Ramsey, is charged with one felony count of cruelty to animals and one gross misdemeanor count of torturing animals, documents filed in Anoka County show.
According to a criminal complaint, Ramsey police officers performed a welfare check Friday at her home on Andrie Street following a call from a concerned neighbor.
When officers approached the home, they found several Coborn's delivery boxes outside, clearly spoiled. They had been dropped off weeks earlier, just after the April snowstorm.
When no one answered the door, officers looked inside and saw the house was "a mess with garbage everywhere," the complaint states.
Officers found an unlocked back door, and, when they opened it, the odor of a rotting carcass spilled out. Officers initially thought there was a death inside.
When walking through the home, officers found three dead dogs and one dead cat, shut inside individual rooms, surrounded by their own feces, the complaint states. One dog was found alive in the master bedroom and taken into custody.
On the dog's collar was Lind's phone number. When officers called her, she admitted she had a hoarding problem that got out of control.
She said she lost her garbage and gas service after not paying her bills, and admitted to knowing about three of her dead pets, one of which was a puppy.
Lind told officers that she'd gotten the puppy in October and kept it in a room so that it wouldn't run away, because she didn't have a yard. But when the smell from the feces became too much, she left the puppy there. She told police she had the puppy for about three weeks before it died, the complaint states.
Lind was arrested and booked into the county jail Friday, online records show. She was released Monday.
If convicted of the felony cruelty to animals charge, Lind faces a maximum penalty of 2 years in prison and/or a $5,000 fine.