Investigators in California completed an excavation at Miranda’s Rescue outside Fortuna and recovered 117 dead dogs. Many of the remains showed evidence of gunshots, and the Humboldt county sheriff’s office said the search was finished on Friday.
The excavation turned up 117 intact canine remains from two dig sites, along with 21 canine skulls, hundreds of bones and six loose microchips at another location near the bodies. At the same scene, investigators also found more than 600 dog collars.
Shannon Miranda statement
Shannon Miranda, the founder of Miranda’s Rescue, posted a statement on 18 June saying, “Miranda’s Rescue is a no-kill rescue.” The statement also said, “We do not euthanize animals simply to make space.”
Miranda also wrote, “Whenever euthanasia has been necessary, I have notified local authorities in advance, even when told that reporting is not required.” In the same statement, Miranda said, “Allegations made without a full understanding of the circumstances can harm not only my reputation but also the future of an organization that has served this community for decades.”
Search warrant findings
Crews searched the property under a search warrant for grounds and buildings for evidence related to animal cruelty and fraud. Before the excavation began, investigators used ground-penetrating radar to locate irregularities beneath the surface, then examined 70 of the animal bodies with X-rays at the scene.
Investigators said 47 dog bodies were taken into evidence but were not examined on site because they ran out of time. They also located an area inside a barn believed to be where the dogs were likely killed, adding a separate physical location to the evidence already pulled from the ground.
Hundreds of collars
Miranda’s Rescue said it accepted hundreds of dogs each year from shelters across the San Francisco Bay Area in return for hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding. That leaves the more than 600 collars as a practical inventory problem as much as an evidentiary one: each collar may mark a dog that entered the rescue system, while the bodies recovered so far account for only part of what the search exposed.
More than two months after the case began, authorities had not filed criminal charges against Miranda or any member of the rescue organization’s staff. The open question now is what happened to the hundreds of dogs the rescue accepted each year that are not among the 117 recovered bodies.
