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Police find torn-apart body, 3 dogs in house
A neighbor had asked police to check on the man.
LIBERTY — Township police made a gruesome discovery Tuesday evening at a Hadley Avenue house — a dismembered body. Police believe the body is that of a man and most likely the resident of the house.
Police Chief Richard Tisone said police believe the man’s three dogs were responsible for the dismemberment.
Tisone was not ready to identify the man for the record Tuesday night or give a specific address, but he said that police believe the man lived in the house by himself.
The body was to be taken to the coroner’s office in Akron today, Tisone said. He said police should have an official identification today.
Tisone said a neighbor who had not seen the man in weeks alerted police to check on him. He said that when police arrived, the snow around the house was undisturbed. When officers looked inside, they saw body parts strewn around.
He said the Animal Welfare League of Trumbull County was called, and one of the dogs was rescued. Two others, a pit bull and a Rottweiler, were shot by police because they were vicious, he said.
Tisone said the house was cold and in deplorable condition.
He said police aren’t speculating how long the man had been dead. Tisone said he didn’t know if the man had been sick.
He added that police have had calls over the past 10 years from people who were intimidated by the man’s dogs.
But Robert Byrne, a neighbor, said he wasn’t aware of any problems with the dogs.
“I knew him,” said Byrne, adding that the victim would help him from time to time around his house or yard.
“He’s a decent kid. He didn’t bother nobody.”
He said the victim often walked his dogs down the street or rode a bicycle with them, and they were always on leashes.
He said that people may have been bothered by barking, because the dogs would often go outside and sit on a second-floor roof.
“The dogs’d be out there and bark a lot,” he said. “I never had no real problems with them.”
Byrne said he hasn’t seen his neighbor in weeks.
He said he heard the dogs barking from time to time.
Byrne said his neighbor was in his 30s or 40s and lived alone. He said he did not appear to have a lot of visitors.