Dog found dead in plastic bag

On Sunday morning, Rena Bonne was out for her routine walk near a sandy area next to the Long Beach Bridge when her German shepherd, Max, ran up to an empty plastic garbage bag and found a dead dog inside.

While Bonne was unable to identify the dog’s breed, she said the animal still had all its hair, but she noticed something disturbing. “It looked like part of the jaw was eaten away,” said Bonne, a teacher at the Hebrew Academy in the Five Towns. “... From what I know about pit bull rings, they use bait dogs. So even if it wasn’t a pit bull, it could still have been from a pit bull fight.”

Bonne said that the dog was tied up in the bag, and she speculates that the animal had washed up after being drowned in the bay. Once home, she immediately e-mailed the animal control unit at the City of Long Beach, as well as Rescue Inc., a local group of animal rescuers.

“The area is frequented by men walking one or more pit bulls, and it may be that this is where they are dumping the dogs they use for fighting,” she wrote. “This is extremely upsetting, and I hope you can do something.”

When Bonne returned to the area that night with a camera in hand, the bag and dead dog were gone.

Stephanie Cieslik, director of the Freeport Animal Shelter, said “Animal control is not in on Sunday, and they have not brought in a dead dog, so I know they didn’t pick it up.” The Long Beach Police Department did not return a call for comment.

James Hodge, the city’s former animal warden, said he was unaware of any dog fighting in Long Beach during his 13 years on the job. “First of all, the houses are too closed in,” he said. “We never found evidence of dog rings that you find in the country or up in a hill somewhere.”

But Hodge added that it was nevertheless possible to have such rings in the city, noting that many people own pit bulls in Long Beach, and that the city currently has no real authority over animal control. “Could there be dog rings popping up and dead animals being dumped where you usually wouldn’t see them? Yes,” Hodge said. “It could also be because the animal control unit is not being run by trained animal control officers.”

Hodge said that many animals are abandoned in the area where Bonne found the dead dog. “People leave cats back there in carriers and crates because they know people back there are going to run into them,” Hodge said. “Now, do people who hurt animals leave them back there because they know people are going to run into them? It’s something that could be going on.”

Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.