{"id":9491,"date":"2013-12-17T21:11:47","date_gmt":"2013-12-18T02:11:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=9491"},"modified":"2013-12-18T10:42:45","modified_gmt":"2013-12-18T15:42:45","slug":"w-brandywine-dog-fighting-kingpin-sentenced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=9491","title":{"rendered":"West Brandywine dog-fighting kingpin sentenced"},"content":{"rendered":"

Judge orders 34-year-old to spend 7 1\/2 to 15 years in prison<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Updated at 10:40 a.m. to add quote from prosecutor<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

By Kathleen Brady Shea<\/span><\/strong>, Managing Editor, The Times<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Shane<\/a>

Shane Santiago, 34, of West Brandywine Township, was ordered to spend 7\u00bd to 15 years\u00a0in prison for his role in a dog-fighting operation.<\/p><\/div>\n

A West Brandywine Township man, accused by Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan of operating\u00a0 \u201ca house of pain and horror\u201d for\u00a0dozens of pit bulls used in a multi-state, dog-fighting operation, was sentenced to 7 \u00bd to 15 years in state prison on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Chester County Court Senior Judge Thomas G. Gavin imposed the sentence on Shane L. Santiago, 34, who pleaded guilty last month to animal cruelty and unrelated drug charges. Earlier this month, Gavin sentenced his wife, Laura Ann Acampora, 34, to 11 \u00bd to 23 months in prison followed by 10 years\u2019 probation, court records said.<\/p>\n

When police executed a search warrant on Dec. 5, 2012, they found what Hogan termed\u00a0 \u201ca full gladiator gym for dogs:\u201d treadmills for endurance training,\u00a0tools to incite biting,\u00a0 steroidal medicine \u201cto amp up their savagery,\u201d a noose used to hang a dog that bit one of the couple\u2019s five children, and a blood-splattered basement arena for staging the fights.<\/p>\n

During the year leading up to their arrests, Hogan said authorities had seen indications that dog fighting\u00a0was occurring in Chester County when maimed or dead pit bulls were found abandoned.\u00a0 He said the multi-agency investigation ramped up in September 2012 when smoke along Rt. 82 led a local fire chief to discover a pit bull burning to death inside a locked cage.<\/p>\n

Hogan said the publicity from the dog-burning case\u00a0caused participants in the dog-fighting world to lie low for a while, but investigators kept pursuing leads. West Brandywine Township\u00a0had received complaints about possible dog-fighting at Santiago\u2019s residence\u00a0in the 1300 block of North Manor Road, Hogan said. He said investigators got a break when they contacted Santiago\u2019s landlord, learned he was about to be evicted, and got permission to search the home.<\/p>\n

The Chester County SPCA was contacted when investigators found injured animals, Hogan said. The agency rescued six dogs, ranging from a young puppy to a severely disfigured adult pit bull. Hogan said investigators also found a dead pit\u00a0bull puppy in a trashcan outside, double-wrapped in plastic bags. In the gruesome world of dog-fighting,\u00a0only winning dogs have value, Hogan said. Losing dogs are generally killed by shooting, drowning, hanging, or electrocution with car-jumper cables – like the ones containing dog hair that were found at the defendants\u2019 residence, Hogan said.<\/p>\n

According to the criminal complaint, Santiago, who referred to the animals as \u201clivestock,\u201d acknowledged\u00a0killing at least 10 dogs by hanging or electrocution.\u00a0He said he used a cable to fashion a noose for one dog that bit\u00a0his daughter and wouldn\u2019t let go, adding that it \u201ctook three minutes for the dog to die,\u201d the complaint said.<\/p>\n

Santiago told investigators\u00a0that he and Acampora \u201cwere planning on making the training and fighting of pit bull dogs a family business,\u201d the complaint said. He said he had planned to host two upcoming dog-fighting matches in his home \u2013 one in December and one in January, the complaint said. Asked about\u00a0an injured dog that had been reported being carried out of his home in August, Santiago said some men brought the animal to spar with his fighting dog, and\u00a0it got hurt, the complaint said.<\/p>\n

Hogan credited Assistant District Attorney Priya T. DeSouza, West Brandywine Township Police, Chester County Detectives, and the Chester County SPCA with a collaborative investigation that resulted in a successful prosecution.<\/p>\n

“It takes a certain type of inhumanity to be capable of electrocuting and hanging dogs,” said DeSouza. “But to force five children to grow up in a household where they would hear the howls of dogs fighting for their life is monstrous. The sentencing judge appropriately recognized all of these factors ….”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judge orders 34-year-old to spend 7 1\/2 to 15 years in prison Updated at 10:40 a.m. to add quote from prosecutor By Kathleen Brady Shea, Managing Editor, The Times A West Brandywine Township man, accused by Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan of operating\u00a0 \u201ca house of pain and horror\u201d for\u00a0dozens of pit bulls used […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[3358,372,1233,1232,803],"class_list":["post-9491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","tag-chester-county-court-senior-judge-thomas-g-gavin","tag-chester-county-spca","tag-laura-ann-acampora","tag-shane-l-santiago","tag-west-brandywine-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9491"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9503,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9491\/revisions\/9503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}