1-year-old chihuahua dies after being abandoned in New Kensington, police say

A New Kensington woman is accused of abandoning a 1-year-old chihuahua in a cage and then taking its corpse before police could retrieve it.

New Kensington police charged Desiree Marcoux, 39, on Thursday with a felony count of aggravated cruelty to animals and a misdemeanor count of cruelty to animals. She had not been arraigned as of Monday, according to court records.

In a criminal complaint against Marcoux, police say her daughter, Mahala Ayanna Collar, tried to make a report July 5 but could not be seen because of a higher priority incident. She went to police again on July 10.

Collar told police she had gotten a protection from abuse order against her mother and had not been staying at her apartment on Industrial Boulevard, the complaint states.

Collar told police she found their dog, Pico, dead when she went back to her residence to grab some of her belongings.

Collar said Marcoux had told her a month or two before that she had given Pico to a friend and that he was being taken care of while Marcoux was staying with a new boyfriend. Collar told police she believes Marcoux abandoned Pico, the complaint states.

Police said officers found Pico dead in a dog pen in the kitchen. The floor of the pen was covered in a month’s worth, or more, of feces, the complaint said.

Of five bowls in the pen, three were empty, one had a layer of a dried-up substance and the fifth had a small amount of dry dog food with vomit over it, police said. No water was found, according to the complaint.

A neighbor living in a downstairs apartment told police he had not seen Marcoux in months and had not heard the dog in quite a while, according to the complaint.

Police met Collar at the apartment late on July 12 to retrieve Pico for a necropsy, but the dog was gone and the kitchen had been cleaned up, the complaint states.

Collar told police that Marcoux had received a copy of the protection from abuse order that afternoon, and that it included a section about what she allegedly did to Pico, the complaint states. Because of that, Collar believes Marcoux removed the dog’s body, police said.

Collar showed police a text that her boyfriend received from Marcoux on July 11 in which she claimed the dog was with her, the complaint said. Police said they knew that was not true because they had seen the dog dead before that date.