After being dog napped and held for just over an hour, Eunice is back at the Alexandria Animal Shelter and is hoping for a real home soon.
"She was trembling and was pretty traumatized when we got her back but she seems to be fine today,” said Tara Blot, the acting director of the shelter. “We’re just glad to have her back.”
The three-year-old Basset hound was stolen from the shelter on April 10, just before 3 p.m. Two men entered the shelter and asked to see a dog. They took Eunice from an exercise yard, jumped into a van and drove away.
“We were very lucky that an animal warden wrote the vehicle tag on his hand and had a very good description of the men and the car,” Blot said.
The shelter staff had been suspicious of the men because they seemed to be intoxicated. “We called an animal warden to watch them but they were able to take Eunice because we can’t lock our gate because of fire code,” Blot said.
ABOUT AN HOUR after the men took Eunice, they took a wrong turn and found themselves on the side of the road not far from the Alexandria Police Department’s headquarters. An officer who had been exercising his own dog recognized the vehicle, apprehended the suspects and returned Eunice to the shelter.
Eunice was brought to the shelter at the end of March. According to shelter staff, she is very friendly. “She is a bit stubborn and will put her mouth around your hand if she doesn’t like something that you are doing,” Blot said. “For this reason, we recommend that she live with adults or a family with teenage children.”
The three men, all from Alexandria in Fairfax County, were identified as Marshall B. Whitaker, Jr, 54, of the 6600 block of Oak Drive; Esmond Whitaker, 52, and his son Brent M. Whitaker, 26, both of the 3400 block of Elmwood Drive, have been charged with grand larceny of an animal, a class 5 felony. They were held in the Alexandria jail on $1,000 bond each.