Charges dropped in Katrina dog killings

BATON ROUGE, La., Jan. 25 (UPI) -- Animal cruelty charges have been dropped against two New Orleans-area sheriff's deputies who shot stray dogs in the days after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Attorney General James Caldwell, Louisiana's new attorney general, said there was not enough evidence to prosecute Michael Minton, a former sheriff's deputy in St. Bernards Parish, and Clifford "Chip" Englande, a sergeant.

Minton and Englande were taped by a photographer for the Dallas Morning News as they patrolled St. Bernards Parish. One sequence shows the men driving away, leaving a mortally wounded black Labrador retriever on the street.

The men acknowledged shooting dogs, saying that they wanted potentially dangerous animals off the street and that they also wanted to spare the dogs painful deaths from hunger and thirst.

The case was investigated by former Attorney General Charles Foti.

Two other attempts by Foti to prosecute people for decisions made in the chaos after the hurricane fizzled. A grand jury refused to indict a doctor who allegedly gave lethal doses of medication to dying hospital patients, while the owners of a nursing home where patients drowned were acquitted.