Disturbing situation in Wayne County, NC as animal control removes pets rescued during Hurricane Florence
UPDATE September 21, 2018 from Tammie’s rescue Facebook page.
“Just to update everyone, Tammie was just arrested and is being taken to county jail. They sent two cars of men to arrest one 4’10” female! Charged with practicing veterinary medicine and some other charges that they said they didn’t know.”
A disturbing situation is unfolding in Wayne County, North Carolina. Please read and if anyone has any idea why animals were confiscated from a rescuer who allegedly was just trying to save animals, leave a comment following this article. Why is a Good Samaritan being punished?
Tammie with some of the cats. Photo courtesy Casey Mozingo
According to a September 19 post by News Argus, Tammie Hedges, who runs Crazys Claws N Paws rescue, got together with others in rescue and took in multiple dogs and cats who were in the path of Hurricane Florence. She was in the process of converting a warehouse as a shelter and decided to help. She stated in an interview with News Argus (please read the article)
“We were trying to help abandoned animals. We knew North Carolina didn’t have any regulations or laws regarding shelters for animals.
So a group of us got together to do something to help those animals is why we opened our building to them so they’d have a safe dry place to go until their owners returned to get them.
I had not gone out and gotten any animals, but a couple of independent rescuers had gotten some from flooded areas and brought them to me.”
Tammie hadn’t opened officially as a shelter, but each animal had its own space, it’s own food and water and the cats had individual litter boxes. You’d think it would be a good thing for the pets to have a safe place to ride out the hurricane and the flooding that would soon follow.
Any animals that were found were noted so they could be returned to their owner at a later date.
Location of shelter
Frank Sauls, animal services manager for Wayne County said:
“You can voluntarily hand over the animals, or I can go get a warrant.”
Tammie handed the animals over. Sauls hasn’t said what charges will be filed and that the investigation is ongoing. Wayne County Animal Control confiscated 27 dogs on Monday. Kathy Davidson, a volunteer with Crazy Claws N Paws was there when the dogs were signed over. Kathy was told Tammie was operating a shelter without the proper license to do so.
Saul hasn’t stated how the warehouse, located in Rosewood, came under animal control’s radar and says that will come out in court if it goes to trial.
Does anyone know anything about this? Is Tammie someone who was breaking the law for whatever reason or doing bad things in general or is local government sticking their nose into something they should stay out of?
Wayne County Animal Control, please feel free to comment if possible.
P.S. Michael (Admin) is looking for answers. He is in contact with Wayne County Animal Services by phone and IM and with Crazys Claws N Paws by FB IM. There may be an update soon with answers. Thanks. Update: I have written a post on my findings (not much!).
