By Fritz Koenig & Mark Gutglueck
YUCCA VALLEY—A dog ran in off the streets into a home in Yucca Valley’s Paradise Valley neighborhood and killed a cat on September 5.
Paradise Valley is nothing like its name implies. Virtually all who live there are subsisting on fixed incomes. Many are receiving government assistance. There are a fair share of disabled individuals living there, along with drug addicts.
Indeed the neighborhood has been abandoned by the powers that be in Yucca Valley. The devout evangelicals from Calvary Chapel are reluctant, indeed resistant, to proselytizing there, though it has been said by observers that it is a perfect place for Jesus to do his work. But its many empty houses and duplexes seem to stand in mute warning to those who would come in to stay out. It comes across as a place that is dangerous for the old and the young.
Eighty-year-old Rose Kirton has found herself living there, in the 6400 block of Camarilla Avenue. Earlier this month, she suffered the terror and indignity of seeing her cat, known as Willy, throttled until it was lifeless by a mean-spirited dog.
The incident was phoned into the Town of Yucca Valley’s animal control department at 8:09 a.m. that Tuesday morning.
The dog, described as “large,” boldly pushed its way into the house after the door was left ajar to ventilate the home at the tail-end of what had been an extraordinarily hot summer season.
There was no stopping the dog’s bloodlust. The cat was no match for the more powerful animal, and the feline was slaughtered.
Animal control officers were able to locate the dog, based upon Kirton’s descriptions. Informed of what his pet had done, the owner of the dog relinquished custody of the pet to animal control officers. It has since been euthanized