$6,000 reward offered in deaths of two dogs

Dan Kulin

Thursday, Oct. 3, 2002 | 11:16 a.m.

A $6,000 reward is being offered for information that helps convict whoever duct-taped the legs of two dogs and threw the pets into a pool behind a North Las Vegas home last month.

"The cruelty is so outrageous and the suffering so excessive if the reward helps catch the perpetrators, it's well worth doing," said Doug Duke, director of the Nevada Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Duke said the Las Vegas-based SPCA joined with animal groups Heaven Can Wait, Media Partners for Pets and the Las Vegas Valley Humane Society to put up $1,000 of the reward being offered.

North Las Vegas Police Lt. Victor Dunn said he did not have the reward donors' permission to publicly identify them, but he said the money is from private groups and individuals.

The case seems to tap a deep emotion, Dunn said.

"I have 20 homicides with no reward. But I guess it's people that love animals," Dunn said. "Maybe they figure it's man's best friend. Maybe it was the way it was done."

Dunn said investigators are still waiting for results of autopsies done on the dogs, which were found floating in an above-ground swimming pool behind a two-story home on Agave Avenue.

The first dog was found on Sept. 21 and the second on Sept. 24. Police believe both dogs were in the pool at the same time, but the second dog went unseen because it was under the cloudy pool water.

"I've been here 17 years and I've never seen anything like this," Dunn said. "This doesn't seem random. It would seem like the owner would know who did this."

Dog owner Gino Archuleta, 27, said he doesn't know who killed his two boxers but believes it was "an isolated incident just aimed at my dogs."

"The police said it was something that was planned. They never tried to break in. They just killed the dogs and left," he said.

Archuleta said a police detective told him they are checking the duct tape for fingerprints and plan to do an autopsy "to see if they were poisoned and drowned or just drowned."

Archuleta's roommate Arthur Cordero said, "Both of us tried to figure out who might have done it. But no one approached either of us about the dogs."

"I've been here a year and it's been a quiet neighborhood until this happened," said Cordero, 36, who got rid of the above-ground pool over the weekend.

Both Archuleta and Cordero were out of town the weekend Archuleta's girlfriend found the first dog. Archuleta found the second dog a few days later. The roommates said the dogs would be outside when no one was inside and weren't a problem in the neighborhood. They said the dogs would only bark when people went near the back yard.

Neighbor Carol Davis, 59, was surprised by the incident.

"It would surprise me in any neighborhood," Davis said. "That's sick. That's really sick."

Davis said her own dog is an inside dog, but the incident will make her keep a closer eye on her dog whenever it's outside.

Neighbor Tim Wilkinson, 34, called it "crazy."

"And to be right next to you like that," he said.

Wilkinson said the incident has made him rethink his perception of the neighborhood he's called home since 1995.

Cordero said he and Archuleta have received a lot of support from the community since the dogs were found.

The incident prompted a neighborhood watch meeting Sunday, and dog breeders have offered Archuleta new dogs.

Police are asking that anyone with information about the incident call 633-9111 or Secret Witness at 385-5555.