While most of the attention from the hugely viral video of a woman in Indonesia who brought her dog into a mosque has been on the pet owner’s legal status, little was known about the fate of the dog after the incident. But, it appears, the worst has sadly happened to the small creature.
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In a Tempo report, security officials in Sentul City, Bogor — where the mosque is located — say they found the dog’s lifeless body yesterday morning — two days after it was brought into the mosque by its owner.
“So this morning our [security officers] were the first to find it. The dog was laid on the side of the road near the mosque,” Sentul City Head of Security Paul Kristianto told Tempo yesterday, adding that he doesn’t know what caused the dog’s death and that it was buried soon after it was found.
The death of the dog — referred to in the media as “Si Hitam”, which is the Indonesian equivalent of “Blackie” — was confirmed by a local animal activist named Esther Imelda in a Facebook post that has gone viral since yesterday. In her post, however, were some discrepancies with the security officer’s story about its death, specifically that, according to Esther, the dog was startled when security guards tried to rescue it, causing it to run onto the road and get hit by a car.
https://www.facebook.com/esther.imelda/posts/10215109419038013
Esther also wrote that the dog’s body was handed over to the local police, though she included a photo of a grave believed to belong to Si Hitam.
Speaking to Tempo, Esther said she wasn’t at the scene when the dog was supposedly hit by a car, but she has doubts about that story and that of the security officials’.
“I’ve heard other rumors… But because the dog didn’t go through a post-mortem I am just going with the [hit by a car] explanation,” she said, noting that there were no external injuries visible in photos of the dog other than blood around its mouth.
Coconuts has contacted Esther for more information.
It’s important to note that there has been no official confirmation of the dog’s death by the police. When asked about the dog by reporters yesterday, West Java Police Spokesman Trunoyudo Wisnu Andiko simply said, “the dog is still there,” without confirming whether or not it was still alive.
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