Bags full of animal heads and carcasses found near Georgia neighborhood, police say
A neighborhood resident stumbled across a black trash bag with an animal leg sticking out of it while walking their dog. The discovery eventually led police to dozens of rotting animal carcasses — many with severed heads — in trash bags near a Georgia neighborhood, according to police.
Officers responding to the apartment complex in Athens found a total of 23 bags full of the carcasses of dead farm animals lying in a wooded area behind two rows of apartments on June 25, according to a report from the Athens-Clarke County Police Department. Some of the bags contained decapitated heads, other body parts and bones.
Residents told officers that they started to notice a decaying smell near the entrance to the neighborhood in November, the report says. The odor went away for about a month but eventually came back.
The dog-walking resident noticed the trash bag with the leg sticking out on June 23 and told two neighbors. After calling their apartment’s management, the residents decided to call the police.
When officers searched the area around the apartment complex, they found bags full of dead carcasses in two sections of the woods.
About 20 feet into the wood line, investigators found five plastic trash bags each containing between one and three carcasses, the report says. In one bag, they found the skull and bones of a small mammal. Most other bags contained chicken bones, the report says.
Investigators believe the bags were likely dumped sometime during the fall of 2021 through early spring of 2022 based on the level of decomposition of the carcasses, according to the report.
In an area near a lower parking lot of the complex, investigators found another 13 trash bags and five large paper bags, each holding the bodies of multiple adult chickens, according to police. Investigators said these bags seemed to have been dumped there more recently.
The bags also had dead pigeons, goats and a small pig. The pigeons, goats and chickens had been decapitated and their heads were found in bags or around the area, the report says.
One of the goat’s heads had a livestock tag with a serial number on one of its ears.
Animal control officers collected some of the carcasses to investigate further, police said.
Residents reported seeing two suspicious vehicles — a dark Lexus and an older pickup truck — in the parking lot of the apartment complex in the middle of the night but never parked in residential or guest spaces, the report says.
Police have so far not named any suspects, but whoever is responsible could face animal cruelty charges, according to the report.
“The circumstances surrounding how and why the bags of animal carcasses were discarded here are still under investigation,” Lt. Shaun Barnett of the Athens-Clarke County Police Department told McClatchy News in an email.
Athens is about 70 miles northeast of Atlanta.
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