Images of animals allegedly recovered from Lynn Leonard’s truck in New Jersey. (Eleventh Hour Rescue)
A 53-year-old woman in Virginia has been arrested after state police in New Jersey say they found dozens of dead cats and dogs stuffed in a series of trash bags inside of her truck while it was parked in the lot of a department store. Lynn Leonard was taken into custody on Monday after she returned to the car and was arrested for a series of animal cruelty charges, authorities confirmed to Law&Crime.
According to a press release from Eleventh Hour Rescue, a nonprofit animal shelter in Randolph that was called in to assist with the scene, volunteers responding in Hampton Township say they recovered about 38 live dogs and eight live cats from inside the vehicle. Unfortunately, they also found “at minimum 40 deceased animals” inside of the truck. The organization called the ordeal “an unimaginable situation of animal cruelty.”
“These animals were living in these deplorable conditions since Thursday and who knows what they endured prior to this. The stench of this vehicle could be smelt from down the road,” Eleventh Hour said in the release. “We were hands on pulling out these terrified dogs from this truck all night as they did anything they could to hide from the world and our lungs are still burning from inhaling the fumes.”
Additionally, the rescue organization said that the “small beaten down pickup truck” was “soaked in feces, urine, & animal remains” when they arrived. The volunteers said they “pulled out garbage bag after garbage bag” filled with “individually packed” dead animals. The dead animals were said to be comprised of “mostly tiny newborn kittens & puppies.”
The Ramapo-Bergen Animal Refuge in Oakland, which also assisted with the rescue, said the animals were living in “horrific conditions.”
“The dogs and cats inside the truck were terrified, huddled in all corners. Rescuers spent the night pulling petrified animals, one by one, out of the truck, the odor hard to bear,” the organization wrote in a Facebook post. “The animals were urinating as they were carried to safety. It was painful to see the fear in the faces of these innocent animals, but even more horrifying removing the bodies of 40+ deceased animals, their remains individually wrapped. Everything in the vehicle was soaked in urine, feces and animal remains.”
The organization said that after Leonard had a house fire at her home in Virginia, she loaded the animals into her Chevy Silverado to drive them to Pennsylvania.
“I think we say this each time, we think ‘Oh this is the craziest story we’ve ever seen.’ And then this really was the craziest we’ve seen,” Megan Brinster, the executive director of the Ramapo-Bergen Animal Refuge said in an interview with New York City NBC affiliate WNBC. “To see them in a truck was unbelievable. And then they were put in crates as they were caught and found.”
State police reportedly said that Leonard had been released from holding pending a court date while the case remains under investigation.
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