A Texas operation that presented itself as a dog rescue turned out to be the opposite. Ashley McFadden, 25, ran what she called Southeast Texas Paw Patrol out of a property near Colmesneil, in Tyler County. According to investigators, she and her boyfriend, Timothy Brockman, were not saving the dogs in their care but severely neglecting and abusing them. Both were charged with felony cruelty to non-livestock animals and a related misdemeanor count.
The most jarring detail is how the case began. McFadden herself contacted the Tyler County Sheriff’s Office, asking to have her home approved as a safe place to take in dogs. By then, though, deputies had already fielded several complaints about the animals on the property.
What deputies found
When officers arrived on February 8, the scene was grim. Kennels were stacked on top of one another, each holding one to five dogs. A mother dog and her puppies sat in a crate fouled with a heavy amount of feces. Other dogs were chained outside, penned, or running loose. A separate building held dogs McFadden described as aggressive and said had killed other dogs.
Deputies charged McFadden at that first visit but did not seize the animals, telling her the conditions could be corrected if she acted immediately. She was arrested on February 12 and held on a $6,000 bond, with a condition attached: she had 21 days to rehome the dogs to a licensed rescue.
That did not happen. When authorities returned on March 9, conditions were the same or worse. Officers found a dead dog, along with crates scattered in the surrounding woods that held decomposed remains. Brockman reportedly told them that burying the dead dogs had been his responsibility and that he simply had not been doing it. More living dogs were discovered in cages with no food, no water, and no flooring. The stench of methane from accumulated feces, one report noted, was overwhelming and dangerous to anyone shut inside the residence.
The rescue, and the toll
In all, officers seized 54 dogs from the property and moved them to Who Saved Who, a rescue facility in Montgomery County. Other rescue groups pulled roughly 30 more to safety, bringing the number saved to just over 80.
The dogs that could not be saved are the hardest part of the story. Investigators believe more than 100 may have died at Southeast Texas Paw Patrol. Rescuers who helped clear the property described dogs so shut down that when their crate doors were opened, they would not even try to come out. One transporter who had previously delivered dogs to McFadden, believing it was a legitimate rescue, said she tried to retrieve them once she understood what the place really was.
The case remains active. The Tyler County District Attorney’s Office has asked anyone who dealt with McFadden or Southeast Texas Paw Patrol to come forward, and by mid-March her bond had been revoked as the investigation widened, with the possibility of additional charges. Several rescues took in survivors and began the long work of medical care and recovery.
A caution about giving
Cases like this always draw people who want to help, and they also draw people who exploit that impulse. The rescuers coordinating the survivors warned that individuals with no real connection to the case were already trying to collect donations. If you want to support the dogs pulled from a situation like this, give directly to the established rescue groups and coordinators publicly named in the case, and be wary of anyone else soliciting funds. The animals that made it out will need months of care. The best way to help them is to make sure your money actually reaches them.
