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September 6, 2012

Grand jury doesn’t indict couple charged in dogs’ deaths

Rachel Brown rachelbrown@daltoncitizen.com

A Whitfield County grand jury did not indict a man and woman who faced animal cruelty charges after their two dogs were found dead last year as they were being evicted from their home.

Clara Dianna Keller and Sean Kelsey Stepp were each charged in August 2011 by the sheriff’s office with aggravated cruelty to animals. Keller said at the time that the dogs where they lived in Tilton were kept on opposite ends of a runner chain, but someone tied them up closer together while the couple was moving and they became entangled and could not reach their food and water.

Efforts to reach Keller and Stepp on Wednesday were unsuccessful. A man who answered at a Calhoun phone number that the court clerk’s office had on file for Keller said no one by that name lived there. A phone number for Stepp in Calhoun had been disconnected.

District Attorney Bert Poston said there were “a number of evidentiary issues” in the case.

“The most significant being that the bodies of the two dogs were removed from the scene by an unknown person after they were discovered but before law enforcement could secure and process the scene,” he said. “There was no medical examination of the bodies of any kind, so we would not have been able to prove the cause of death.”

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