It’s been more than a week since a battle erupted between the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department and would-be animal rescuers about the fate of a family of stray dogs living under a vacant house in Altus.
Two women spent a night in jail on trespassing charges for trying to snag the untended puppies, whose mother was found in a nearby field, paralyzed and with a broken back. The man who rescued the injured dog and one of her puppies from the house’s crawlspace was also charged. All three have pending court dates on misdemeanor charges.
Animal welfare advocates from Altus and many other places are raising their voices in protest, both online and in person. A social media post that’s made its way across Facebook and Twitter in recent days captures the theme: “The puppies in Altus, Arkansas are dead. Prove me wrong. #showusthepuppies”
Sorry ???? #Showusthepuppies #TheAltusPuppies pic.twitter.com/NZEyhmCUKc
— Rural Arkansas (@arvalleyblue) February 14, 2024
So far, though, no proof of life has been publicly offered beyond the word of law enforcement who say the puppies are well-fed and safe, albeit in an undisclosed location.
Franklin County Sheriff Johnny Crocker declined to say where the puppies are but vouched for their wellbeing. On Friday, Feb. 9, Crocker told radio station KDYN he’s keeping their location private because of security concerns.
“I’m never gonna give you the location of these puppies, or where they’re at, because I’ve received probably 300 death threats,” Crocker told radio journalist Marc Dietz. “My wife’s been threatened, my deputies and jailers and dispatch have also been contacted. You’ve crossed the line.”
Franklin County Sheriff’s Deputy Jonathon Little said on the phone Wednesday that he’s seen the puppies, they’re fine and the incident is over and done with. “Most of the people complaining aren’t even from here,” he said. “99.9% of them.”
On Tuesday, though, the people who showed up to a protest at the sheriff’s office remained unconvinced. One woman said the sheriff had shown her photos of some dogs, but they didn’t match the description of the puppies at the center of the still-unraveling mystery. They’re older and almost fully grown, she said.
So, what’s really going on in Altus? Where are the puppies? Why did people go to jail for trying to rescue them? In a tempest of competing theories and little hard evidence, people tend to fill in the blanks for themselves.
“This is bigger than the puppies now,” animal rescuer Bethany Stark of Ozark said. “Every one of us has reasons to believe something is being hidden in that house that needs to be uncovered.”
‘Momma Dog’
Buddy Ruggero, a veteran and father of three, was the first to get in trouble with the law over the puppies. Ruggero and his wife knew “Momma Dog” because they saw her pretty much every day. On Monday, Feb. 5, they saw the dog running across the road when they were taking their son to school. That afternoon, though, Ruggero’s wife saw Momma Dog lying in a field. They pulled over to investigate.
“She couldn’t move. I knew her back was broke,” Ruggero said. So he put her in their van, then went to find the puppies he knew she was keeping somewhere near an empty house on Carbon Plant Road owned by local business owner James Williams.
Ruggero said he had pulled one puppy from under the house and was searching for more when Williams pulled into the driveway, blocking them in.
“I was still under the house, but I could hear him cussing and whatnot toward my wife,” Ruggero said.
A Franklin County deputy soon pulled up and gave Ruggero a citation for trespassing. The family left with Momma Dog and one of her pups and headed to the veterinarian’s office for X-rays.
The Ruggero family no longer has the dogs. They’re with volunteers at the Artemis Project, a local animal rescue group. But Ruggero said he believes he and his family are being harassed by Franklin County deputies. One circled a park where his kids were playing basketball, Ruggero said. Another brake-checked him while he was driving.
Ruggero wants the trespass charge against him dropped; he believes it was legal for him to go on private property to care for dogs in distress. He also just wants to put the incident behind him.
“I’ll be honest, I’d be OK with them calling me and apologizing. But I haven’t heard shit from anybody.”
‘Altus be Altusing’
Sara Jane Douglas lives outside of Altus proper, but drives through town every day on her way to drop her daughter at school. “Altus be Altusing,” she said when asked to sum up the case of the missing puppies.
On Tuesday, Feb. 6, the day after Ruggero’s run-in on Carbon Plant Road, Douglas said she started getting text messages about a crowd forming across the street from an empty house. She headed over that evening to find law enforcement at the house and neighbors and animal rescuers across the street.
That same day, 73-year-old Connie McMillan of Ozark and 29-year-old Mary McKinney of Muldrow, Oklahoma, were arrested and taken to jail for the night on trespassing charges. (The women did reportedly manage to scoop up one of the puppies, so now Momma Dog and two of her puppies are being cared for by Artemis Project animal rescue volunteers. They suspect there are four more puppies whose whereabouts and wellbeing are uncertain.)
Douglas said she remained on the scene for hours, but was never able to get very close.
“They specifically told us that if we stepped on to the roadway or walked toward the property, we would be arrested,” Douglas said.
A Franklin County deputy told the crowd that the puppies were safe at a vet’s office, she said.
“I yelled back, ‘Show us the dogs.’ They never did.”
Douglas said she doesn’t understand why the sheriff’s department doesn’t just post a video or photo of the puppies and put an end to the mystery.
“They have nothing to gain by not showing these dogs are alive and well,” she said.
On Tuesday, Douglas joined others for a protest at the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office.
“I’m going out there to let them know that we still care. We’re not going to quit caring,” she said. “This is insanity. We should be working with rescuers to help the stray problem in this area. We should not be trying to run them off and condemn them.”
‘Mob mentality’
Altus is a town of fewer than 700 people, and Mayor Veronica Post takes a hands-on approach to local governance. When she got word that a crowd of people and a line of law enforcement vehicles were queued up at an empty house, she headed over to try to keep everyone calm.
Asked to recount the facts of the case, Post said that’s hard to do. “It’s very convoluted. I don’t know if anyone has the actual story.”
Post said she heard from volunteer animal rescuers about the injured dog hanging around the empty house on Carbon Plant Road and asked city employees to contact the property owners. This was before Ruggero got cited for trespassing and social media erupted with #showusthepuppies posts.
“Mr. Williams and Mrs. Williams said they would take care of it. I don’t know why they didn’t do that right away,” she said.
Post said she was disappointed that people who showed up hoping to collect the puppies ended up getting arrested for trespassing instead.
“It’s very unfortunate that Mr. Williams did not simply let these volunteers take the puppies and be on their way. It would have been over that evening.”
Altus has one police officer on staff, and he was not on duty when McMillan and McKinney were arrested, Post said. The Altus police officer has since seen the puppies, but was not allowed to photograph them, she said.
“I’m questioning why they would allow him to come look at the puppies but not take any pictures of them. That’s the part I’m not understanding,” she said.
The family whose property is at the center of the uproar has stayed silent.
Animal rights advocates put James Williams’ namesake plumbing business on blast, posting the phone number to Williams Plumbing across social media platforms. When we called the number, though, the man who answered said James Williams no longer works there, and hasn’t been on the job since October.
Contacted by phone Wednesday afternoon, his wife, Meghan Williams, did not comment.
“We need to let you know that we need to receive no further contact. We have a lawyer,” she said.
Sheriff Crocker said in his Feb. 9 radio interview with KDYN that there was no evidence the property owners ever did anything wrong. They’d been feeding the dogs and hadn’t abused them in any way that he could tell. Concerns that Momma Dog’s back was broken during demolition work on the house don’t seem to be founded, he said. He suspects the dog was hit by a car.
Williams did not want anyone in the building because he was worried someone would get stuck or injured and he could be sued, Crocker said in the radio interview. And Crocker’s offer to have the fire department or police get the puppies out was declined.
Crocker told Dietz he didn’t want to arrest anyone in the dispute over the puppies, but felt that he had to.
“I did not want to arrest anybody, but eventually, when you get a mob mentality on the other side, you’ve got to take them to jail,” he said.