Neglect report was filed against Wichita woman two days before starved dog was dumped

Two days before a Wichita woman allegedly abandoned her dog in a dumpster, a neglect complaint was filed against her with animal control officers.

Raykesha Hardyway, 26, is charged in Sedgwick County District Court with one misdemeanor count of animal cruelty. Prosecutors allege that she abandoned a pit bull-boxer mixed named Kodak without making provisions for its proper care.

She was arrested after the Wichita Police Department investigated the case of a dog locked in a cage and thrown in the trash. The starved dog was “extremely emaciated,” police said. An animal rescue group said the dog, now named Bowie, was found and taken to an emergency veterinarian.

An affidavit written by a Wichita police detective was released by the court last week. It details the investigation by Officer Heather Frazier, a WPD animal abuse expert, and other cops.

The dog was found on Jan. 8 by a resident of Ashley Lane Apartments at Pawnee and Oliver who had just come home from the gym. The resident called the Wichita Animal Action League and took the dog to a veterinarian, where it was treated for hypothermia, malnourishment and dehydration. The male dog weighed 22 pounds — less than half of the 45-50 pounds that the approximately 2-year-old dog should have weighed.

Frazier described the dog as “very skinny with every bone in his body visible,” according to the affidavit.

The manager of the apartment complex showed Frazier video footage from a security camera that showed two people carrying what appeared to be a box or a crate to the dumpster, then leaving without it. Instead of walking to an apartment, the people walked back to a home on nearby Glendale Street.

The Wichita Animal Action League publicized the case on social media, which was followed by several Crime Stoppers tips and an anonymous call to 911 dispatchers. The tipsters identified Hardway and her incarcerated boyfriend as the owners of the malnourished dog, and they gave her address as a home in the 2200 block of South Glendale.

The affidavit states that after receiving the anonymous tips, an animal control officer found a neglect report had previously been filed against Harydway. Frazier spoke with a neighbor whose friend had filed the complaint, and the neighbor said she saw Hardyway leave her home with a very skinny brown dog.

The neighbor said she offered to give Hardyway some food for her dog, but she refused. Hardyway told her the dog was skinny because he was sick, according to the affidavit. The neighbor’s friend then filed a complaint against Hardyway on Jan. 6 — two days before she allegedly abandoned him.

Several attempts by animal control to contact her after the complaint was filed were unsuccessful, the affidavit states.

An animal control officer returned to her home on Jan. 12, but couldn’t find the dog. She told the officer that her dog had run away.

Hardyway was later arrested while at work. The affidavit states that she gave Frazier the pass code to her phone and asked her to call a family member to pick her children up at daycare. As Frazier was on the phone, she saw a message pop up on the phone screen advising Hardyway to take down her Facebook page “ASAP.”

Police checked her Facebook, where they found photos of her with a dog that appeared to be the same one rescued from the dumpster. Social media searches showed she called the dog Kodak and that she sold puppies.

During an interview with officers, she first said her dog ran away two months earlier before changing her story to two weeks earlier. She denied that she was the owner of the malnourished dog found in the dumpster near her house, and she denied dumping her dog there, according to the affidavit.