Thousands of homeless dogs and zero shelters: who will answer for the torn child in Bashkiria

A terrible tragedy happened shortly before the boy's birthday. On that day, he rode his bike outside the house. At some point, a neighbor saw that a pack of dogs was tormenting someone's body, but at first he thought it was a doll. The child's mother was at home then. Eyewitnesses told her and the police about the incident. The dogs tore apart the boy's entire face - bones were visible on one side, and the skinned skull was separated from the body. The child's funeral will take place today, April 20. The district administration took all expenses on itself.

On the fact of the incident, a criminal case was initiated under the article "Negligence, resulting in the death of a person by negligence". Investigative Committee Chairman Alexander Bastrykin took control of the investigation. The regional prosecutor's office also intends to assess the actions of officials who did not organize the capture of stray animals.

Residents claim that they have repeatedly turned to the local administration with a request to take control of the situation with stray dogs. “Local social networks are actively discussing the issue of these dogs. They even wrote about the attack on people. Please, help! People are scared to send children to school. Dogs run in packs. Evil”, - wrote Yana Abramova. Her statement was taken into account by representatives of the administration of the head of the republic.

After the tragedy, the administration of the Uchalinsky district reported that a certain individual entrepreneur Garipov, with whom an agreement was concluded in April of this year, is engaged in trapping homeless animals. Officials assured that the contractor visits the addresses every day where, according to residents, dogs run. According to the municipality, since the beginning of 2021, 26 dogs have been caught in the Uchalinsky district, in 2020 - 275.

The correspondent of Mkset called the number at which applications are accepted, but they refused to provide information about the contractor, they could not name the exact number of complaints from residents either.

At the same time, the mother of the deceased boy claims that the dogs that tore her son to pieces have an owner. “You have to shoot if the owners cannot properly look after their dogs,” she says. At the same time, who is to blame for the tragedy, the grief-stricken mother still does not understand.

Local residents believe that catching stray dogs will not save the situation - after all, the dogs will again find themselves on the street. This can only be helped by animal shelters, which do not yet exist. Also, some residents believe that parents should not have left a 4-year-old child unattended.

On April 19, an operational meeting was held in the government of Bashkiria, at which the issue of stray dogs was not raised. Earlier, the head of the republic, Radiy Khabirov, limited himself to such a statement about the tragedy: “Law enforcement agencies will conduct an investigation and assess what happened. For our part, we will also analyze the situation and draw the necessary conclusions, and we will take the problem with stray dogs under special control".

It is noteworthy that shortly before the incident, the LDPR faction in the State Assembly of Bashkiria proposed to suspend the law on the responsible treatment of animals (according to which it is impossible to kill stray dogs) due to attacks by stray dogs on animals. According to the head of the faction, Vyacheslav Ryabov, a large number of complaints are received, but the authorities have no money to solve the problem. And catching and neutering dogs does not guarantee that the dog, once again on the street, will not attack a person. Ryabov says there were much fewer complaints before the law was passed. Moreover, the problem is relevant for many regions of the country.

According to the All-Russian Association for Animal Welfare, there are over 660,000 stray dogs in Russia. At the same time, the shelters are designed for approximately 114 thousand animals. Most of the neglected dogs are in Tatarstan, Krasnodar Territory, Bashkiria and Orenburg Region. Residents of the latter also complain massively about stray dogs. There, dozens of herds destroyed deer and roe deer, there were also cases of attacks on people, writes 56orb.ru. The prosecutor's office intervened in the situation with the homeless packs by filing a lawsuit against the mayor's office. The prosecutor insisted on opening a criminal case.