LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A dog found deceased inside a Las Vegas apartment was likely abandoned more than two months before a maintenance crew found his severely emaciated body, officers said in court documents the 8 News Now Investigators obtained Wednesday.
Joshua Faamai faces a charge of animal abuse. Officers believe the dog was left alone in the final days of November 2021, documents said. Unable to care for himself, the animal likely died within days, police said.
Clark County Animal Control officers responded to an apartment on Feb. 2, 2022, after a maintenance crew went to clear it out, finding the blue and white Pitbull named Dallas deceased on the floor, documents said. The name of the apartment complex was redacted in court documents.
The officer said he found the unit “in disarray” with Dallas “laying on the floor in the living room,” documents said. There was no food or water available for the animal and a “bag of dog food” was on a table but “clipped closed and out of the dog’s reach.”
A necropsy on Dallas determined he suffered from severe emaciation, noting the animal was “starved to death,” documents said.
An officer found Dallas’ owner via a lease agreement and a microchip, documents said. The owner had moved out of state, having been evicted from the apartment the previous November, documents said.
Dallas’ owner told the office she left Dallas with a neighbor went she moved out, documents said. She told the officer “she made sure she left him with somebody” because she could not take Dallas with her, documents said.
That same day, Faamai called the officer, saying “he was the one who left Dallas in the apartment, that [it] was a ‘huge mistake on my part,’ and that he ‘didn’t mean to live him there,’” police wrote in court documents.
Faamai told the officer he left the dog in the apartment after moving out “because the lease was up and that he couldn’t afford to bring Dallas to the new address because they had a separate pet fee he couldn’t pay for,” documents said. It is unclear from the redactions how Faamai is connected to the woman identified by police as Dallas’ owner.
“I asked, ‘So you just decided to leave him in there?’” the officer wrote in the report.
“Faamai said, ‘Yeah, I thought it was the safest possible option, I didn’t want to let him go, like you know out into the street or anything because that is kind of a crappy thing to do [too]. But also leaving him in there also kind of backfired on me,’” documents said.
Faamai confirmed a neighbor was supposed to take care of Dallas but then told the officer, “There was but you know since I got the news, you know, that he died, I kind of guess that fell through,” the officer said.
It was unclear what led to Faamai’s arrest on Monday, May 1. Judge Harmony Letizia set Faamai’s bail at $1,000, ordering him not to possess any animals, records showed.
Faamai paid bail and was released from custody. He was due in court again in August.
The Nevada SPCA offers information about making the difficult decision to surrender a pet on its website at nevadaspca.org/rehoming-your-pet.
