PHOENIX Sheriff’s deputies raided the home of rapper DMX on Friday, seizing several pit bulls and finding the remains of three other dogs but making no arrests.
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office received a tip more than a week ago about dogs being kept in inhumane conditions at the Phoenix-area home, said Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Detectives visited the home and then called one of the rapper’s lawyers and told him that the conditions for the animals at the property needed to be improved or deputies would take action, Arpaio said. The dogs were not being fed or given water. Authorities returned to the home Friday.
The 36-year-old musician and actor, whose real name is Earl Simmons, was not at home during the raid. Simmons’ lawyer, Murray Richman, said Simmons hasn’t been in Arizona for at least two months and was “extremely disturbed” to hear the animals weren’t being cared for properly.
“We had a caretaker that wasn’t taking care, that’s what happened,” Richman said. “He loves dogs — he loves these animals. Those dogs are practically his family.”
Arpaio said the deputies who served a search warrant at the home Friday seized 12 pit bulls tied up on the property and took them to an old jail that has been converted into an animal shelter.
Deputies found the buried dogs when they dug up the back yard. One had apparently been burned and the cause of death on the others was unknown because the bodies were decomposing.
Deputies also found a variety of firearms, Arpaio said. Authorities sought additional warrants so they could check the guns to determine if they were legal. DMX’s albums include “It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot” and “Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood” and “Year of the Dog … Again.” [via ASSOCIATED PRESS]
BOSTON HERALD: “In 2002, [DMX] pleaded guilty to the cruel treatment of 13 pit bulls in New Jersey. He avoided jail time by agreeing to make a public service announcement against animal cruelty. The rapper has a long rap sheet, including a string of convictions for drugs and weapons possession. In 1999, he was arrested on charges of stabbing and shooting his mother. He was eventually cleared.”
*
RELATED: “Michael Vick’s estranged father said he pushed his son to quit dogfighting years ago or, at least,
put property used for the fights in the name of friends to avoid being implicated some day. Michael Boddie, in two sometimes tearful interviews with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said sometime around 2001 his son staged dogfights in the garage of the family’s home in Newport News, Va. Boddie also said Vick kept fighting dogs in the family’s backyard, including injured ones bit up, chewed up, exhausted, that the father nursed back to health. Boddie dismissed the idea that Vick’s longtime friends were the main instigators of the dogfighting operation. “I wish people would stop sugarcoating it,” Boddie said. “This is Mike’s thing. And he knows it.”
“He likes it, and he has the capital to have a set-up like that.”
Boddie said he and Vick have had a volatile relationship for years. Boddie said he is speaking out because he’s been hurt by his son and wife’s failure over the years to correct what he considers inaccurate media reports that Vick grew up without his father present.
Boddie, 45, lives in a Duluth, Ga., apartment that his son has paid the rent on for the last three years. Vick also gives him a few hundred dollars every week or two, the father said. Boddie wanted more. Two years ago, he said, he asked Vick for $1 million, spread out over 12 years, enough to keep him comfortable for the rest of his life. Vick declined, the father said. [via KANSAS CITY STAR]
DMX: Get At Me Dog