BENTON, Ark. (KTHV) — Instead of the joy that comes from helping a family find a pet, the leader of a Saline County dog rescue is now dealing with overwhelming sadness.
Kelley Prichard said that one of the puppies in her care was taken from her and murdered.
Prichard described finding the body of her four-month-old puppy, Naomi, near her front door late Monday night.
“I just went out to bring my dogs in, you know, I had let them out for one last potty break before bed,” she said. "And I brought them in, and that’s when I found her.”
Prichard said Naomi was last seen a week before when her boyfriend let her out with their other dogs. When Prichard arrived at their Alexander house 20 minutes later, Naomi was nowhere to be seen.
“She never leaves our immediate yard — front yard,” Prichard said. “She, normally, she’s pretty shy and scared of her surroundings and everything. She was just starting to come out of that.”
They assumed Naomi was in the woods surrounding their home, but seven days of searching turned up no trace of the dog. But late Monday night, she said Naomi’s body appeared, and that the dog had been gutted from head to tail.
“I was just horrified,” she said. “Absolutely horrified. She was, she had been brutally murdered. It was very graphic, and she had been dumped in my yard.”
Prichard, who had worked with veterinarians for several years before founding Adopt a Stray Rescue, said the cut was so clean, it had to be from a knife. She also saw no punctures or gashes that an animal would have created. Naomi also still had all her baby teeth, which Prichard said were starting to loosen.
“If she had been attacked by something and tried to fight back, those teeth would’ve come out,” she said.
Prichard said the weather provided another clue that Naomi had been taken by someone. Large parts of Saline County flooded because of the storm that drenched Arkansas last week, including in Prichard’s neighborhood.
“We searched the woods every day last week, in the rain,” she said. “We searched for hours every day and we never found a trace. If she had been out there, she would’ve had mud on her, she would’ve been dirty, she would’ve been wet. She was as clean, last night when she was in my yard, as the day she left our house. And she had no mud in her mouth, nose, anything.”
She posted on Facebook Tuesday morning about finding Naomi. By that evening, her words of trauma and anger had been shared thousands of times.
“It makes me feel good to know that people, at least, care enough to share it,” Prichard said, “and that, hopefully, there will be some justice. And, you know, hopefully, her death won’t be in vain.”
She is offering a reward of $7,000 to help find Naomi’s killer. And she ever finds out who that is,
“I have a lot that I would say,” Prichard said. “But none of it could be aired.”
Prichard met with a detective from the Saline County Sheriff’s Office to begin an investigation. She noted, however, that aside from the dog’s body, there is little physical evidence. She hopes the reward will convince someone to come forward with information.