Man Arrested For Allegedly Keeping 12 Dogs in a Quincy Basement
David Aristide was arrested yesterday and charged with cruelty to animals after allegedly keeping a dozen dogs in an uninhabitable building in Quincy.
This wasn’t Aristide’s first encounter with the law regarding the treatment of his dogs. “We had an incident with him in 2011,’’ Lt. Jack Sullivan told Boston.com. “It was similar with excessive number of dogs, lots of noise, dogs not attended to and one dog bit. He moved the dogs out of there, well my guess that he now moved the dogs to this address, some have been as long for two years.’’
The most recent problem came to the Quincy Police Department’s attention two weeks ago when animal control received complaints from neighbors about excessive barking at 2325 Kidder Street.
Aristide was summoned to a hearing to address the noise complaints on Wednesday, September 3. Before a decision could be reached, there was another noise complaint on Monday, September 8. Police officers again went to the house.
This time, they got a glimpse of where the dogs were living. Sullivan called the house “a hoarders paradise.’’
“They looked in and saw squalid conditions,’’ Sullivan said. “Dogs were barking and yelling and conditions were terrible. Dogs were dirty and there was a dirt floor. The house was abandoned.’’
A search warrant was issued to get inside the house. On Tuesday morning, police entered the home. Aristide was not home at the time of the search.
With the help of animal control, authorities found seven dogs in the basement, surrounded by filth, Sullivan said.
“You could barely walk,’’ Sullivan said. “Downstairs there was a dirt floor, wood stove which is illegal, the stench of urine was overpowering, there were some shavings to make a bed, some droppings of feces, fly traps.’’
City services deemed the house uninhabitable and animal control took the dogs.
Sullivan then used what he called “police ingenuity’’ to arrest Aristide: he called him and told him to come down to the station to talk about the condition of his dogs. When Aristide walked into the station, he was arrested and held overnight. He is being arraigned today.
Five more dogs were found in Aristide’s car when he arrived at the station. They allegedly had also been abused, and were turned over to animal control.
Aristide claimed they were all Poodle-Doberman mixes he bred himself, Sullivan said.
A veterinarian examined the dogs and though they do some medical issues, they are expected to fully recover.
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