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East Mesa mobile home fire kills 32 dogs
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A Maricopa County Sheriff's Office deputy watches a fire that killed at least 32 dogs on Tuesday.
Tim Hacker
At least 32 dogs died in a fire that gutted a mobile home Tuesday in east Mesa.
According to Wesley Simmons, a neighbor who lives in the 400 block of South 98th Place where the fire occurred, he and friends and neighbors cleared the dead dogs out of the cluttered, destroyed property.
Simmons said the dogs were in a 10-foot by 12-foot penned area of a single-wide trailer home on a county island.
One of the dogs is still in the rubble because he was stuck to the floor under a mountain of melted VCR tapes.
“None of those animals had a fighting chance,” Simmons said.
An invoice for the animal carcasses from Maricopa County Animal Care and Control show the dogs were chows, Chihuahuas, English bulldogs and Labradors.
Neighbors have complained in court about the number of dogs on the property at 410 S. 98th Place.
In a 2006 Tribune story, neighbor Mary Ann Zessin said the dogs barked day and night and the smell was atrocious.
Sheriff’s deputies have also been called out to the property dozens of times over the years. Maricopa County zoning enforcers were in the process of the forcing the resident, Beth Schmeltz, to clean up the property, which is a menagerie of junk, toys, Christmas decorations and stuffed animals.
Deputy Doug Matteson, a Maricopa County Sheriff’s spokesman, said investigators consider the fire suspicious.
Several dogs did survive.
Aprille Hollis, a spokeswoman with Maricopa County Animal Care and Control, said a private organization has stepped in to care for some of the surviving animals.
Simmons said he and the property owner, Jamie Endicott, discovered the animals when they went to assess the damage and figure out how many Dumpsters would be needed to clear it out.
He said the carcasses were beginning to smell.
He said it took two loads of a pickup truck to take the dogs to the animal control office.
A justice of the peace evicted Schmeltz and her husband March 23, but they were still living there because the final paperwork had yet to be filed with the court, according to Schmeltz’s lawyer and court records.
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