BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – A woman left her two dogs to die in their crates inside of a U-Haul moving truck for four days, according to the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office.
Deputies arrested Eugena Marie Blake, 66, Wednesday. She was booked into the Brevard County Jail on animal cruelty charges.
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Investigators said Blake was recently evicted from her apartment and used the 15-foot U-Haul truck to take her possessions to a friend’s one-bedroom apartment, which she knew did not allow dogs.
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Blake left the animals — named Baby and Lucky — in their crates in the back of the truck for four days, according to deputies, when temperatures averaged 87 degrees.
She then requested her daughter drive her to a nearby business, where investigators said she requested a garbage bag, telling an employee her dog had died.
Deputies said Blake then paid a friend who was struggling financially $20 to clean the truck and dispose of the dog’s bodies. The remains of the animals were found days later, still in their crates, by a homeless man who reported the discovery to the sheriff’s office, records show.
Agents from the animal cruelty unit were able to identify the dogs and obtained a confession from Blake, according to the sheriff’s office.
“This case absolutely disgusts me as there was no need for these two dogs to suffer and die at the hands of someone they trusted to take care of them!! I want to personally thank the gentleman who found ‘Baby’ and ‘Lucky’ for notifying law enforcement after he found the two dogs,” Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey said in a Facebook post.
Blake now faces two felony counts of animal cruelty and charge for violating her probation from a previous criminal case.