7 Pit Bulls Confiscated in Raid Will Be Killed : Crime: The animals are believed to be trained for dogfighting and vicious. Six suspects in alleged ring plead not guilty.

Seven pit bulls seized during a raid on an alleged dogfighting ring in a residential Palmdale neighborhood will be destroyed, animal care officials said, because they were trained to be vicious.

“These dogs cannot be redeemed,” said Bob Ballenger, executive assistant for the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control. “They’ve been trained to fight.

“They’re very aggressive and not going to be retrained, period.”

The dogs are being kept at a county facility, “where they will be killed once they no longer have any evidentiary value,” Ballenger said. It could be several months, he added, before a judge issues such an order.

Two of the dogs seized at the site had suffered serious injuries, said Deputy Bob Beals of the Sheriff’s Department’s Special Investigations Bureau. The others, he said, had varying levels of scarring.

The current location of the animals is being kept confidential because “dogs like this are very likely to be stolen out of shelters because of their value,” Ballenger said.

Six men, including three sergeants stationed at Edwards Air Force Base, were arrested following the raid Tuesday, during which sheriff’s deputies say they found an 8-by-10-foot enclosed pit in a back yard where dogfights occurred.

The suspects all pleaded not guilty Thursday in Antelope Municipal Court to three felony charges each of participating in dogfights. Each also pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of child endangerment for allegedly allowing children to be around the dogs.

Deputy Dist. Atty. John Evans said the men each face a maximum of five years in state prison if convicted. A preliminary hearing on the case is scheduled April 26.

Sheriff’s deputies said they raided the home of Bobby Auston, 32, on Tuesday morning in response to a phone tip from a nearby resident in the neighborhood of single-family homes.

“They received information from an anonymous informant of someone going into the house with pit bulls,” said Deputy Paul Ullman. The informant, Ullman continued, told deputies that shortly thereafter came “the sound of dogs fighting.”

One neighbor interviewed this week said she often heard the cries of the dogs during the past year. “It’s the yelping or screaming you hear a dog make when it’s beaten or abused,” said the neighbor, who asked not to be identified.

But Auston’s 26-year-old live-in girlfriend, who declined to give her name, described Auston as a dog-lover who was training three dogs in his back yard for shows. She said she knew nothing about any organized dogfighting taking place there.

“It was just a bunch of friends getting together,” she said.

The girlfriend said that police misunderstood the purpose of training equipment kept there.

In addition to Auston, those arrested were Edwards Air Force Base Sgts. Frederick Tate, 23, George Wood, 31, and Russell Joyner, 32; Lancaster resident Anthony Juniors, 25, and Rosamond resident Michael Garcia, 32.

All were free Thursday on bail or their own recognizance except Juniors, who remains in custody because of a parole hold from a previous felony conviction, Evans said. The prosecutor said the offense was not related to dogfighting.

Edwards’ officials said they are waiting to see what happens during legal proceedings before deciding if any action will be taken against Tate, Wood and Joyner.

Pit bulls are an aggressive species with a bite twice as dangerous as that of a German shepherd, said Eric Sakach, an investigator with the Humane Society of the United States. But Sakach, who is based in Sacramento, said that training is needed to make them vicious enough for dogfighting.

Typically, Sakach said, a dogfighting match goes on until one of the dogs refuses to attack.

“They don’t fight to the death because if you’ve spent literally thousands of dollars raising and training animals, you don’t want it killed off,” Ballenger said.