WINNSBORO – A Winnsboro woman charged with two counts of cruelty to animals in January was found guilty on both counts in Fairfield County Magistrate’s Court last week. Rosa Laqunna Vesselles, 27, of 223 Doty Road Ext., was fined $135.19 for the first count and $139.25 for the second count by Judge Michael Paul Swearingen on March 20.
Vesselles was issued the citation by a Fairfield County Sheriff’s deputy on Jan. 28 after the deputy discovered one dead dog and a second dog in decrepit condition tied up in the front yard of Vesselles’s home. The surviving dog later perished.
According to the original incident report, a Sheriff’s deputy was patrolling the area on Jan. 28 when, at approximately 10:45 a.m., she “saw what appeared to be a very frail” dog lying motionless in the yard of the home. After knocking on the door of the home for several minutes and receiving no answer, the deputy walked to the back yard and found the dog to be deceased, still tied to a chain, which was attached to a post stuck into the ground.
“There was no shelter for the dog,” the report states, “very little food and no water.”
A second dog was found on the far side of the home. The dog, while still alive, was “very thin, poor (and) malnourished,” the report states. The dog was also tied to a chain that was attached to a post in the ground, surrounded by trash and his own feces, and also had “no water, very little food and no shelter. The dog was so weak it could barely stand.”
