{"id":34210,"date":"2025-07-03T02:55:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T02:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/34210\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T02:55:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T02:55:18","slug":"phoenix-area-couple-arrested-after-their-2-dogs-starved-to-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/34210\/","title":{"rendered":"Phoenix-area couple arrested after their 2 dogs starved to death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\"><b>PHOENIX (AZFamily)<\/b> \u2014 A Phoenix-area couple is facing animal abuse charges after investigators said they let two of their dogs starve to death.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">According to the Maricopa County Sheriff\u2019s Office, Ebony Johnson and Telesfor Lavato brought Nala and Star, both goldendoodles, to a BluePearl Animal Hospital location on June 21, because the dogs were so malnourished. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"Ebony Johnson, left, and Telesfor Lavato, right, were booked into jail on four animal cruelty...\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/3V4ULL3B3VDXJDZ7F2LRSAW6WE.png\" width=\"980\" height=\"551\" \/>Ebony Johnson, left, and Telesfor Lavato, right, were booked into jail on four animal cruelty charges.(Maricopa County Sheriff&#8217;s Office)<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Nala weighed just under 17 pounds while Star weighed a little over 21 pounds. The average for a goldendoodle should be about 66 pounds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Nala died at the hospital. Johnson and Lovato told the veterinarian their third goldendoodle died in their apartment earlier in the day. MCSO said the couple admitted that they only fed their dogs when they could afford it since they used to be homeless.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">On June 23, Star, the only surviving dog, was surrendered to MCSO. She was also malnourished, with muscle wasting away and no noticeable fat. Star is now in the case of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcso.org\/community\/mash-story\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.mcso.org\/community\/mash-story\">Maricopa County Sheriff Office\u2019s Animal Safe Haven<\/a> (MASH) unit until she can be adopted.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"Star is in the MASH unit until she can be adopted.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/KABGMHKH4BDZJJG47KIFP5GUFY.jpg\" width=\"980\" height=\"735\" \/>Star is in the MASH unit until she can be adopted.(Maricopa County Sheriff&#8217;s Office)<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">On Wednesday, Johnson and Lavato were arrested and booked into jail on four counts of cruelty to animals, including two felonies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">\u201cOur pets depend on us for love, care and protection,\u201d Maricopa County Sheriff Jerry Sheridan said in a written statement. \u201cI want to make it clear that we will not tolerate any form of animal abuse or neglect in our community. Every animal deserves to be treated with kindness and respect, and those who choose to harm them will be held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/page\/send-us-your-feedback\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Please click here to report it<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/community\/user-content\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">it to us here<\/a> with a brief description.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2025 KTVK\/KPHO. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX (AZFamily) \u2014 A Phoenix-area couple is facing animal abuse charges after investigators said they let two of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":34211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5858,24144,5643,1587,7182,28332,28331,28329,28334,28330,28327,1589,7183,28328,28333,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-34210","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-animal-abuse","10":"tag-animal-cruelty","11":"tag-arizona","12":"tag-az","13":"tag-azfamily","14":"tag-ebony-johnson","15":"tag-emaciated","16":"tag-goldendoodle","17":"tag-jerry-sheridan","18":"tag-malnourished","19":"tag-maricopa-county-sheriffs-office","20":"tag-phoenix","21":"tag-phoenix-news","22":"tag-starve-to-death","23":"tag-telesfor-lavato","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-united-states-of-america","26":"tag-unitedstates","27":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","28":"tag-us","29":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114787052868254346","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}