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East Toledo dog dead, others sick after rat poison found in raw chicken

An East Toledo neighborhood is on edge after people living in the community say one dog is dead and others ill after poison was found in their back yards. Neighborhood residents say they don't know how it got there.

TOLEDO, OH (Toledo News Now) - An East Toledo neighborhood is on edge after people living in the community say one dog is dead and others ill after poison was found in their back yards. Neighborhood residents say they don't know how it got there.

Ross Ortiz says his dog Gotti suddenly became sick last week. Ortiz lives near the intersection of Parker and Greenwood.

"About three in the morning, I got woken up and I went out there to look at him and he was puking up blood," said Ortiz.

He says he rushed Gotti to the vet only to find out he had eaten rat poison. The four-year-old American Pit Bull died a few hours later.

Then Ortiz started to think. He knew he didn't use any poison around his home so where did it come from?

"That's when I went out back of my house and started looking. And I seen the pellets all by the fence. It made me think like someone had to dump that there, because if there was a box there'd be evidence of the box around here somewhere," said Ortiz.

Then he talked with a neighbor, who said she kept finding raw chicken in her yard.

"When she mentioned the raw chicken we went and looked. We were looking in the garbage cans and we found a piece and when we got it out and opened it up there was about four or five pellets in the chicken," says Ortiz.

Ortiz says his dog wouldn't have eaten the poison by itself, but if it was inside chicken he definitely would have eaten it.

Later he learned some of his neighbors' dogs were becoming sick too. He says a van caught on camera in the ally may have played a role.

"They got out and they were dropping stuff on the other side of the fence. You seen their hand come up and drop on the other side of the fence, whatever it was in his hand. You can't tell from the camera what's falling, but you also see him fling stuff over to my neighbor's yard," said Ortiz.

Ross believes someone planted the poison, but he has no idea why

"I can't believe someone would do that. I mean I had this dog since he was a puppy," said Ortiz.

As of Thursday evening, police were not conducting an investigation.

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