Tale Is Wagging Dog Lovers but Reports of Abuse Appear False

It was a dog’s tale, indeed, and it spread swiftly Tuesday morning: Seven pooches had been tossed off Compton Creek bridges in the previous 24 hours, and only two survived the fall.

A young boy was said to have watched a teenager throw a dog off the Oleander Avenue bridge Monday night and heard the tosser laugh as if it were sport.

And on Tuesday morning, Compton Creek, which feeds the Los Angeles River, was being described by residents as a wasteland of dead animals, discarded as unwanted pets, or, just because.

But by Tuesday evening, authorities could not prove that any dogs were thrown off bridges. These facts were certain: Animal control officers did find two dogs in the littered creek bed--one so unscathed as to be an unlikely victim of a 35-foot drop from the bridge. Carcasses of a cat and another dog were retrieved from the creek bed, too decayed to know when or how they got there. The five rumored dog carcasses were not found.

That didn’t stop the rumors, or grim predictions.

“A fireman told me that serial killers start out torturing animals,” said Rosie Martinez, gazing at the creek across the street. “Babies thrown off. Animals, what’s next?”

“Kids,” her 11-year-old daughter Priscilla said seriously. “I think maybe kids are next.”

But authorities said they could not find any eyewitnesses to the alleged incidents. And predictably, outraged callers flooded animal control offices, asking about the conditions of the survivors and what was being done to avenge the tossed dogs.

“The version I heard was that some kids found this dog and threw it over the bridge last night,” said Bob Ballenger, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control, which has both rescued dogs in its custody. “So we go out there and start asking questions: Has anyone witnessed this? Well, no, but they heard about it, or heard so and so saw it. And then you ask that person, and they say no, but somebody told them. Or they saw somebody with the dog right before. You get into this stuff and it’s like trying to grab smoke.”

For the record, he added, if anyone did witness a dog tossing and is willing to testify to that, animal control would love to prosecute said dog tosser on charges of cruelty to animals, a felony.

Amid the confusion about time and location and which dog got thrown from where, the general narrative seems to go like this:

A black Labrador/pit bull mix was spotted Sunday in the creek bed north of the Oleander Avenue overpass, which runs through a neighborhood of older stucco homes where residents feel threatened by graffiti and roving stray dogs that have been a problem.

Various residents claim to have reported the black dog at various hours Monday to animal control. Some residents indignantly demanded to know why the dog was left to suffer for hours before officials responded.

But animal control says it was notified at 8:20 p.m. and arrived at 9 p.m. The Compton Fire Department was called to aid animal control officers in getting into the creek. The dog was swaddled in a blanket and rope and hoisted out.

That dog, a female, was being cared for at a Lakewood animal hospital, where she was to be X-rayed and examined today by a neurologist. It appears that she has a spinal injury, Ballenger said.

Having caught wind of the rumored dog deaths, Ballenger said, the department dispatched 10 animal control officers early Tuesday, who made a sweep of the concrete-lined Compton Creek in search of dead or wounded animals. What they found was the crippled Lab mix and remains of the cat and another dog.

Also found was a 6-month-old puppy, black and white and probably a pit bull mix. It was limping but in pretty good shape, Ballenger said. It would be hard to imagine a dog surviving a 35-foot fall without more grave injuries.

Taken to the county animal shelter in Downey, the pup has been nicknamed Scout--”because he was down there where nobody else would go,” Ballenger said--and quickly became a media darling, his mug splashed across television newscasts all day. Scout will be kept for four days in case his owner comes to fetch him. Then he may be adopted by a member of the public.

At least 50 people called the Downey shelter Tuesday afternoon, some offering to pay for medical expenses.

“I wish this many people would do this for all the dogs here; we have about 200 here,” Ballenger said. “But these are special circumstances.”

And so it was that Compton and its damaged and stray dogs made big news. It is not unusual, residents say, to see wild or stray dogs running the streets of Compton, sometimes dragging 8-foot chains. There are so many strays in this city of 90,000 that a full-time animal control officer is stationed in Compton, and teams sweep the city monthly for strays, Ballenger said.

Residents near Compton Creek said it’s routine to find dead dogs in the flood control channel, as well as dead cats and chickens.

Standing above the creek on Oleander Avenue, the boy rumored to have witnessed the whole thing pointed to a spot below the bridge.

“See right there, where the paint can is, but below the mop? That’s where the one was,” said Mariael Crumby, 13, perched on his bike. “Then over there across the water, by where the mattress is? Well right by the shopping cart is where I seen another one.”

The boy said he saw two boys with a dog on the sidewalk near the bridge, but he never actually saw a dog going over the side. Details of his story seemed to shift in the retelling.

But he was certain the rumors of seven dogs thrown off bridges were true. He seemed resigned to the animal carnage, as did many children scurrying between TV news vans, wearing Eyewitness News pins and helping with interviews. Outsiders were another story.

“I got a call from Victorville saying, ‘If you catch this person, send them out here. We will deal with them,’ ” Ballenger reported. “I had to tell her that’s not how we work.”