Florida Couple Arrested For Keeping Starving Pets In Condemned Home

A Florida couple were arrested after animal service workers found 17 dogs and two cats who were severely emaciated and neglected in their condemned home.

Animal Control Specialist Kimberley Duncan didn’t know what she was in for after she received an animal cruelty call on Monday night. When she walked into Jessica Ankiel and Abrhamam Israel’s home, she found starving dogs and cats locked inside rusty cages on a filthy floor that was covered in feces and urine.

Two children were also found inside the house and one of them reportedly had excrement on his leg. Israel also kept a fully loaded gun inside an unlocked nightstand, so both of the children were taken to stay with family.

“It’s an unfortunate situation … There were several animals in the home and it created a poor condition of just general filth,” Orange County Animal Services spokeswoman Diane Summers said.

Ankiel admitted that she operated an animal rescue service from her own but got in above her head. She was charged with cruelty to animals and Israel was charged with neglect of a child, failure to report child abuse and leaving a firearm within easy access of a minor.

On the Ohana Dog Rescue’s Facebook page, Ankiel wrote that the rescue’s mission is to ‘to find the perfect forever homes for the dogs we pull’ from kill shelters across Florida.

Offiicials said that Ankiel was running an unregistered rescue and that only four of the pets rescued from her home were adopted directly from Animal Services.

On her Facebook page, Ankiel wrote that they were in the process of filing the appropriate paperwork to become a non-profit organization.

Do you think Ankiel deserves jail time for this? Or do you believe she just got in over her head and didn’t intentionally try to hurt the animals?