April 8, 2008

(Eds. Note: At press time, the following announcement was made: Jeff Driggs, Morgan County dog warden, resigned following a 2-1 vote by county commissioners who asked Driggs to resign or be fired.)

McCONNELSVILLE, Ohio –- An Ohio Dog Warden is being investigated after canine remains were found in a mass grave behind his shelter last weekend.

Allegedly, Jeff Driggs has been burying hundreds of euthanized animals behind the county facility for an unknown period of time.

The Ohio SPCA came to the site after receiving a tip that animals were receiving substandard treatment. They found no animals in the shelter, but did uncover the remains of dogs which were protruding from the ground.

“We could not walk anywhere without walking on bodies of these animals -- fur and bones were sticking out of the ground,” said Teresa Landon, executive director Ohio SPCA. “There is literally of hundreds and hundreds of bodies -- some fairly decomposed and others fairly fresh remains of dogs.”

While the investigation is ongoing, the Environmental Protection Agency has already made one determination on the shallow grave.

“It is the violation of Ohio’s Open dumping laws, so we will be citing the Morgan County Commissioners,” said Linda Orr, of the Ohio EPA, which has ordered the bodies to be transferred to a landfill.

As of March 31, Morgan County officials have placed Driggs on unpaid administrative leave and the Ohio SPCA is now handling all the county’s dog needs until the case is resolved.

“We want to make sure that we are fully compliant with the law, we want to do everything that’s legal, that’s moral, that’s ethical,” said Rick Shriver, Morgan County Commissioner, who is expected to make a final determination on Driggs’ employment status after an internal inquiry is completed.

This is not the first time Driggs has been investigated. In 2002, he admitted to shooting more than 600 dogs in the head to euthanize the unwanted animals.

At the time, shooting dogs was a legal euthanasia practice. Since then the county has updated its policy to only lethal injection. However, the change of heart only came after an investigative report blitzed the regional media.

The county’s belief that “doing it their way, the same way they had for years as a catch-and-kill type of policy” roused local protest, according to Landon, who had offered four times to help the county switch to lethal injection.

But, Landon said, it took the help of an investigative journalist to get them to modernize.

“After they kept ignoring us, we went public with the information,” said Landon. “Then several weeks later they voted to switch to lethal injections.”

Under different commissioners, Driggs was allowed to remain at his post as the county’s part-time dog warden -- where he has served for 21 years -- but he was required to euthanize only by lethal injection.

Now, Landon is skeptical of whether Driggs has followed the policy.

“We’ve now found two skulls that were shot in the head,” said Landon. “They are being examined by the Anthropology Department of Ohio State University to determine the age of the bones, and when the shooting might have happened.”

If the rest of the animals were lethally injected, their remains pose a danger to other animals that might come across the bodies and ingest the fatal chemical of pentobarbital.

The dumping is also a violation of EPA regulations for disposing of euthanized bodies and threatens public health.

“Because if they are euthanized, by lethal injection, it means the drug would have contaminated the soil, which is right on a flood plain,” said Landon, who reports the Muskingum River recently flooded the property.

She believes the flooding could have contributed to the surfacing of so many bodies.

While the discovery was nothing short of grisly, Landon is doubtful Driggs will receive severe recourse.

“It’s probably unlikely that he would face charges of animal abuse, but the county would be responsible for the public health concern of a shallow grave,” said Landon. “However, if he broke the three-day rule, it could be a violation of the dog warden code laws.”

Landon has made a formal request for the county’s intake records to track the facility’s history of when dogs were picked up and how long they were kept before being adopted or euthanized.

“What we find in a lot of these rural counties is that their records aren’t very accurate,” said Landon of the SPCA’s mission of being a “municipal systems’ ” watchdog. “But we want to make sure that they are being proactive in getting animals out of the pound and are being humane.”

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Courtney Rochon, WTAP News; Debbie Geboboyls and Kathy Lynn Gray, The Columbus Dispatch, contributed to this article.