This is the extraordinary case of a Spanish animal shelter in the holiday resort of Torremolinos, Costa del sol in Spain. The shelter is the Parque Animal Shelter. Its head was a woman: Carmen Marín Aguilar. Her accomplice in crime was Felipe Barco Gómez; the caretaker at the shelter.
In summary, what she did was to kill 2,183 cats and dogs in an incorrect manner. She used an inadequately small dose of a euthanising drug in order to save money. It was injected into muscle, the wrong place. In short she tried to save money with a complete disregard for the pain it caused to more than 2000 animals.
It is said that she wanted the animals out of the shelter to make room for other aspects of the shelter which were more profitable. Apparently she had a private animal clinic at the shelter although the director did not have a veterinary diploma. Perhaps there are other criminal aspects to this story that weren’t followed up.
What is remarkable is that both Carmen and Felipe disconnected the shelter’s security cameras while they were unlawfully killing the animals. And they also played music over a megaphone (I presume loudly) to drown out the howls of agony of the cats and dogs that they were cruelly killing to enhance their profits. How callous can a person get?
The criminality took place between January 2009 and October 2010 at which point it came to light during an inspection. Not only were they killing animals illegally on a massive scale they were also doing it very quickly. It is said that one person dropped off two puppies at the shelter and they were killed later the same day. The person had paid the shelter €60. Obviously he had no idea that he was sending the puppies to an early and agonising death.
As often happens, Carmen pleaded her complete innocence and her love of animals! She said that she has a phobia of needles and therefore she could not have injected them. She said that she did not even dare to cut their nails. She is obviously a excellent liar and a callous, hardhearted bitch.
She was jailed for three years and nine months for the unlawful killing of a large number of healthy dogs and cats in a way which put them through prolonged agony. Felipe, her accomplice, was jailed for a year. Carmen was also fined €19,800 and her accomplice was fined €3,600.
I believe that this is the worst case of animal cruelty by an animal shelter manager that I have encountered. Although it would not surprise me if something similar has happened elsewhere but not come to light.
Sources: The Sun and the Guardian (dated 9th Jan 2017).
