A shocking case of animal abuse in a small Northeast Ohio town bears a striking resemblance to the horrific case of dog abuse investigators uncovered on Sycamore Street last year.
Last Friday, June 15, investigators from the Portage Animal Protective League’s Humane Investigations Department armed with a search warrant headed to a Mantua, Ohio home after they learned the owner, Barb Wible, was in trouble in another county for alleged animal cruelty.
The owner is the founder of Canine Lifeline, Inc., a nonprofit animal rescue. Inside the home, investigators discovered 146 dead dogs. According to the organization, the animals were in various stages of decay, and many were locked up inside dog crates.
The folks at Canine Lifeline Inc. expressed shock at the discovery in a post on their organization’s webpage, “Like the general public, volunteers of the nonprofit animal rescue organization Canine Lifeline have been shocked, horrified and confused to learn of the devastating revelations regarding its president and co-founder, Barb Wible, and the dogs that suffered in her home. We share your grief and despair.”
They say emergency personnel responded to Wible’s home in Parma in early June and reported animals in deplorable conditions to authorities, and that triggered the investigation into her former home in Mantua.
According to Canine Lifeline, the investigation “Has uncovered overwhelming evidence of ongoing fatal animal neglect in both her current Parma residence as well as her former home in Mantua.”
Some of the animals in Wible’s Parma residence survived and were taken to the Parma Animal Shelter.
This case may remind many of the discovery of multiple decaying German Shepherd dogs at the Sycamore Street home of former vet tech Samantha Damron.
Two months ago, a Scioto County Common Pleas Court judge sentenced the Portsmouth woman to 75 days in jail, $7,000 in restitution, and prohibited her from owning pets.
Damron pleaded guilty to 10 counts of animal cruelty back in December of 2022. You’ll recall that Damron was napping next to the decomposing corpses of 20 dogs when a Portsmouth City Health investigator discovered assigned to investigate the stench coming from the home and made the disturbing discovery at a Sycamore Street home.
Nothing could have prepared the inspector and the officers who responded to the scene for what they discovered. The scene was so disgusting that even jaded police officers became physically ill.
Police found twenty dead German shepherd/shepherd mixes inside the home, along with 28 living animals. Samantha Damron was napping beside the liquefying corpses of the animals.
Unbelievably, Damron was a veterinary technician. Damron frequently shared pictures of groups of dogs on her social media. Additionally, she had several posts criticizing others for taking poor care of their animals. Damron called one breeder a “dumpster fire.” Damron also spoke out about the amount of stress that veterinary care providers suffer.
She also seemed to have an interest in animal skeletons, sharing a post from a site offering skeletons of kittens and puppies and other collectibles related to dead animals.
