Dog found dead in kennel; Cahokia police investigating

Police were investigating after a dead dog was found Saturday afternoon in a kennel in the 200 block of Donald Street in Cahokia, however city officials did not pick the body up until Sunday.

Someone called the dispatcher at 5:17 p.m. reporting a dead dog was in a kennel covered in a white sheet, according to Cahokia Police Chief David Landmann.

Police arrived three minutes later and called the street department for help remove the dead dog from the edge of a wooded area, Landmann said, but no one was on duty. He said the dog had been dead for quite some time before the call came in.

”The police department isn’t equipped to handle that kind of situation. That is done by the street department or animal control,” Landmann said.

Officers took pictures and canvassed the area, but everyone who was interviewed by police said they knew nothing regarding the matter. Landmann said no suspects had been identified as of Monday afternoon.

”We don’t know who put the dog there; it is under investigation,” he said.

Animal control officials checked and the dog did not have a microchip, Landmann said.

Cahokia Mayor Curtis McCall Jr. said he didn’t learn about the situation until early Sunday morning, and there was no one on staff over the weekend. So, he contacted someone who was not on duty to go get the dog, and had to pay them overtime.

“They picked it up and appropriately disposed of it. I don’t know how long the dog had been dead, but it had been a while before I earned about it,” McCall said.

He said if the dog was dead before the owner left, they should have contacted county Animal Control, and not just left it.

A spokesman for St. Clair County Animal Control, who did not identify himself, said the agency did not handle the situation but refused to answer questions about weekend staffing and whether they would have come out to pick up the dog if they had been contacted.

This story was originally published August 6, 2018 at 1:02 PM.