UPDATE: Ahoskie Couple Charged With Cruelty to Animals After PETA Discovers Dogs Left to Starve

For Immediate Release:
December 1, 2025

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Hertford County residents Tarnecia Lassiter and Tony Curtis Smallwood have just been charged with two criminal counts each of cruelty-to-animals. This follows a PETA fieldworker’s grim discovery of a starving and severely emaciated dog named Lucky, languishing just feet away from the decaying remains of his yard mate, a young female dog named Coco. Both dogs were tethered to doghouses by heavy metal chains on Lassiter and Smallwood’s property. Photos are available here.

When PETA fieldworkers found Coco and Lucky on November 9, Smallwood told them he had just finished serving a 30-day jail sentence and admitted that no one had provided food or water to the dogs for a month. Smallwood also admitted that he had been home for at least two days, and was aware that Coco had starved to death, yet Lucky had still not been given a drop of water or any food. Although PETA rushed Lucky to a veterinarian for emergency treatment, before transferring him to the Virginia Beach SPCA for continued care, Lucky succumbed 10 days after PETA rescued him, due to the severe neglect he suffered at the hands of his owners.

“No dog should suffer a prolonged and agonizing death at the end of a chain, unable to escape and scavenge something to eat or drink, but this misery will continue until officials finally ban chaining in Hertford County,” says PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. “This winter will bring freezing weather, and dogs will be out there on their chains, so we urge everyone to help by reporting cruelty and neglect when they see it—and by joining PETA in calling on their county commissioners to make chaining illegal so that more dogs don’t suffer the way Coco and Lucky did.”

PETA fieldworkers find dogs chained or penned without access to food, water, or shelter every day, and the most recent incidents are far from the first time they’ve discovered the bodies of dogs who starved, froze, or died of heat stroke or thirst. Last month, PETA’s fieldworkers found the decomposing remains of three dogs on a property in Bertie County they had previously visited regularly to provide free doghouses, food, water buckets, and other essentials.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.