Seattle city councilmember helps neighbors save dog from homeless shelter after video of animal cruelty goes viral

A Seattle City Councilmember worked with the community to rescue a dog from a homeless shelter after a viral video showed the animal being beaten by a resident at the county-funded facility.

Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Jonathan Choe posted a video on Monday showing the dog being horrifically beaten inside a King County Regional Homeless Authority (KCRHA) transitional housing unit near 10th Ave E & E John St. in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. The video was taken by neighbors across the street.

Neighbors could not get ahold of local agencies to respond because of the holiday weekend, so Seattle City Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth, who represents the district, sprang into action and worked with neighbors to see what could be done.

The plan was to approach the owner with police and offer to buy the dog. However, upon arrival at the unit, a woman answered the door and turned over the dog without any protest.

According to a police report obtained by The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI, Isaiah David O'Neal-Sapp answered the door and matched the "light-complected black/Hispanic male with curly, afro-like brown hair" that was observed in the video of the dog being physically abused. Officers also observed that the dog in the unit "looked like a gray Pitbull flailing and trying to escape" the suspect's grip in the video.

After officers ordered the suspect into the hallway he hesitated and "ran away from the door, further into his unit." Officers remained at the unit and ordered him to exit into the hallway. He complied, was placed under arrest for Animal Cruelty 1, read his Miranda rights and transported to the King County Jail for booking.

However, the dog was left with the suspect's girlfriend, after he was arrested Saturday following a neighbor’s call for animal cruelty. The question remains as to why the dog was left with the girlfriend and not removed from the environment and taken for treatment.

A video from KOMO News reporter Jackie Kent showed Hollingsworth and neighbors taking the dog out of the complex as nearby community members could be heard cheering.

Holingsworth told The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI that she took the approximately 1-year-old dog, named Angel, to her family's veterinarian and that as of Monday afternoon, the dog was on the road to recovery. She added that the dog  would be staying with her until she was moved to a foster home. "She does have some sore torso area going on and some other things that we're going to nurse her back to health, a little bit of malnourished, so she is underweight and we have a foster home available for her."

"There's three things that I can't tolerate. One is child abuse, the second is elderly abuse, and the third is animal abuse. These are people that are vulnerable, and they can't help themselves, and it's just something that I just have no tolerance for."

She continued, "I took it upon myself to have action, and I want to really thank the neighbors and other folks that stepped in. It was a team neighborhood effort."

Last month, Choe reported that King County Executive Dow Constantine and KCRHA quietly moved dozens of homeless drug addicts from a dangerous encampment in nearby Burien, to apartment units in Seattle after finding children and animals in the encampment. Some were moved to this complex.

Spokesperson for KCRHA Lisa Edge told Hoffman in a statement, "This incident is very concerning to us, and we condemn violence of all kinds against people and animals. Police arrested the person in the video. We appreciate CM Joy Hollingsworth stepping in and taking the dog to a veterinarian since animal control is closed today because of the holiday."

She claimed that KCRHA doesn’t own this building, and the clients have individual leases but admitted that "a case manager wasn’t on site at the time of this incident," despite claiming that "people living in the building are receiving services."

Hollingsworth told Hoffman, "There's going to have to be some conversations regarding the case management piece to this, folks that are in these buildings, that there's some issues that have been brought from the street inside these buildings, and having the proper services to make sure that people can be able to take care of themselves, let alone the animals that come with them."

She said that she ideally didn’t want to separate animals from people, but if “they can't even take care of themselves, then we can't allow the dogs to be in these situations because they're unsafe, so there's going to be some conversations about this because this is in my district and I have the responsibility to make sure that I protect the people in the building and around the building as well.”

After Hoffman noted the numerous scandals that have plagued KCRHA, Hollingsworth replied, “There's going to be some accountability, some opportunity for us to improve and there's going to be some heavy conversations about the direction that we're going in. We have to do better. We all want to do better the investments we make. We have to do better bottom line.”