8 animal deaths, 7 cruelty cases in charges against Wake County woman

A 24-year-old woman has been charged with starving eight animals to death and abusing seven others.

Six of the abused animals are dogs that were left emaciated and without food or water, the accusations said.

The charges against Brigette Maunette Baldwin are in six arrest warrants obtained by Garner police and the Wake County Sheriff’s Office.

Baldwin turned herself in to authorities at the Wake County Detention Center on Thursday night and was held on $15,000 bail.

Garner police said they found four cats that had starved to death and six dogs that had been “abandoned in deplorable conditions with no food or water available” in an apartment in the Lennox Place complex.

Each dog, Garner police said in their arrest warrants, was “extremely emaciated.”

There were a male black Labrador that weighted about 40 pounds, a 15-pound beagle, a 4-month-old black Lab-mix, a second beagle, a black and white pit bull and black and white shihtzu whose sex officers could not determine because its hair was so matted, the warrants said.

Police found the animals when they accompanied Wake County deputies who had gone to the apartment Nov. 6 to serve an eviction notice. Police swore out arrest warrants the next day.

Baldwin had once lived in the apartment, Capt. Joe Binns said in a phone interview, though police had no way of knowing when she moved out.

Police charged Baldwin with four counts of killing animals by starvation, a felony, and six counts of felony cruelty to animals.

The deaths of the other four animals were alleged in arrest warrants that sheriff’s deputies swore out Nov. 9.

Those warrants involved dog and cat deaths, a sheriff’s spokesman said, but the breakdown between the two species was not available.

A misdemeanor charge of cruelty to animals involved a cat, the spokesman said.

The animals were at a house on Chelsea Drive, in unincorporated Wake County, that is listed in arrest records as Baldwin’s address.

This story was originally published November 16, 2018 at 1:06 PM with the headline "8 animal deaths, 7 cruelty cases in charges against Wake County woman."