BETHEL -- The beating death this week of a moppy-haired white terrier named Irvina is prompting outrage among animal activists, veterinarians and rescue groups who are urging police and prosecutors to pursue a criminal case with a vengeance.
James Whitman, 29, of Bethel is jailed on charges of beating his sister's dog to death with a flashlight and then tussling with police, according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday in Bethel. He originally was booked on misdemeanor animal cruelty, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct charges but the cruelty charge was upgraded to a felony because of the dog's death, Bethel Police Chief Andre Achee said Friday.
Some people were misinformed and circulated an email that mistakenly said Whitman didn't face an animal cruelty charge, Achee said. He and District Attorney June Stein were flooded with emails, and the case is showing up on Facebook pages.
In the hours before the attack Wednesday, Whitman was drinking, another sister, Eunice Whitman, told Bethel police. She took her kids and left for the day because she wanted him "to sleep it off," the complaint says.
Bethel is a "wet" community in which alcohol is allowed but has no approved liquor permits. Individuals can possess alcohol but it can't be bought or sold.
When Eunice Whitman got home, "she heard a lot of 'thuds' coming from inside the residence." She put her children back into the car and went inside the home.
There she saw her brother beating the dog with a flashlight, she told police Cpl. Amy Davis. He was trying to kill all of their sister Sarah's dogs, she told police.
Joan Dewey, a co-founder of the 3-year-old advocacy and rescue group Bethel Friends of Canines, said Sarah Whitman is a caring pet owner who had three dogs including Irvina and Irvina's mother, Katarina. It appeared only Irvina was attacked, said Dewey, who was called about the beating Wednesday by both police and the Whitman sisters. Sarah Whitman was sobbing so hard it was hard to discern what happened, Dewey said.
When Cpl. Davis arrived around 6 p.m. Wednesday, the sisters were trying to get Whitman out of the home but he had hooked his foot around the front door and wouldn't leave, the complaint said. The siblings lived together in Sarah Whitman's home.
Davis found James Whitman on the entryway floor. Davis wrote in her complaint that Whitman kept pulling away and fighting as she tried to handcuff him. After another officer arrived, they were able to get him under control, the complaint said. Whitman's hands were bloody and bruised and he smelled of alcohol, Davis wrote.
There was blood and a large bloody flashlight on the floor, the complaint said. A medium-size dog was lying there. It was bleeding and struggling to breathe.
Wednesday evening, the dog died as Sarah Whitman was putting it on a flight to get emergency treatment in Anchorage.
Whitman was arrested and taken to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Correctional Center, where he is being held on $5,000 bail and a requirement for a third-party custodian.
Sarah Whitman is reeling emotionally and so is the rest of the family, said Dewey, a clinical social worker for the state Department of Corrections. On Thursday, a group of dog lovers went to the home to help Sarah dig a grave in the yard for the young adult dog she had raised from when it was a puppy.
Friday evening, Sarah Whitman still struggled to talk of the horror she saw. She had been at work at the Allanivik Hotel just a short while Wednesday when her sister called with news of trouble. But Sarah Whitman said she wants people to report animal mistreatment and authorities to act.
"I don't want anybody to go through this again," Whitman said. "I don't want anybody to lose their loved pets."
It's rare, but not unheard of, for an animal cruelty case to be filed in Bethel though charges typically stem from neglect -- malnourishment and starvation -- rather than a fatal beating, Achee, the police chief, said.
While the criminal case is unusual, the mistreatment of a dog in Bethel is not, Dewey said. In a community with high levels of stress and dysfunction, animals, children and elders too often are abused and neglected, she said. She's seen photos and other evidence of horrible things done to animals, with no one punished, she said.
"We've had incidents of hangings. We've had incidents of slit throats. We've had kids dragging a string of puppies," Dewey said. Children don't seem to understand the consequences of what they are doing. A woman in a neighborhood known simply as "Housing" found the head of a dog under her place.
Though Bethel has a leash law, many dogs run loose through the streets and people shoot them right in neighborhoods, Dewey said.
Now Bethel police are taking the Whitman case seriously, she said.
Achee said police investigate animal abuse cases but haven't always been able to connect the mistreatment to an individual. Once they were shown a picture of a dead dog that appeared to have been hanged.
"We sent officers trudging through the tundra. We couldn't find it," Achee said.
The Bethel Friends of Canines group already has set up a program to rescue dogs and cats from the city shelter before they are euthanized, which used to happen in just four days, Dewey said.
"We're trying to change the norm," she said. "It's like with DV (domestic violence). It was deemed a long time nobody's business but the family's."
Bethel's courthouse is so loaded with cases of child abuse, sexual abuse and domestic violence that activists fear the case against Whitman could get dropped or plea-bargained down, Dewey said.
"We don't want it to be quietly settled," she said. "We want it to be an educational moment and an opportunity to turn this around."
Mistreatment of animals in rural Alaska usually happens out of public light, and they continue to suffer, said Sally Clampitt, president of Alaska Rural Veterinary Outreach Inc., which provides vet care to pets in rural Alaska.
"If there was ever an example to support enforcement of statewide animal cruelty laws and minimum standards of animal care, this is it," she wrote in an email Friday to state veterinarian Robert Gerlach and copied to others.
Activists also are seeking public condemnation of the dog killing. Though the charges against Whitman are just days old and he hasn't been convicted, activists already are pushing for him to be ordered into treatment and to make amends to the community and his family.
"Mr. Whitman makes not only his community look bad, but our state as a whole. Consequently, we as Alaskans (must) take a stand," the group Alaskan Shelter Dogs said on its Facebook page in a post suggested for emailing to Achee and Stein, the district attorney.
Achee said he heard from 40 or 50 people about the dog beating, but almost none were from Bethel or the Yukon-Kuskokwim region.
He said he understands the anguish -- he's a pet owner -- and said police are taking the case seriously. But the system needs time to work. Plus, there are far more serious matters before the courts, he said.
"We have homicide cases. We have sexual assault cases, sexual abuse cases," Achee said. There's not the same kind of public outcry about those, which is troubling, he said.
Animal cases are important, but the protection of people is the No. 1 priority, he said.
"And we will do our best to accommodate both," he said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described Bethel as "damp." It is actually "wet," meaning sales of alcohol would be legal with a permit. But with no approved alcohol permits, it functions similar to a "damp" community with legal possession but no sales.