#MostEvil | Andrea Hardingham Davies, born 05/04/1993, of Cherry Lane, Liverpool L4 8SE – left her two pet labradoodles to starve to death in an abandoned house.
Davies locked brothers Koda and Hachi in the property at Stepney Grove, Liverpool, and never returned – condemning them to an agonising death.
Davies failed to tell anyone that the dogs were in the property, after she moved in with her mum and sister.
But her then landlord later called the RSPCA after entering the property on August 9, 2016, around two months after Davies abandoned the house in a filthy state.
RSPCA Inspector Helen Smith found the bodies of the two-year-old dogs decomposing in the kitchen of the property – next to an empty water bowl.
Inspector Smith said the smell of the rotting corpses forced one police officer who attended the scene to leave the house.
Davies pleaded guilty to two charges of animal neglect.
Peter Mitchell, prosecuting on behalf of the RSPCA, told the court Inspector Smith was pointed in the direction of the kitchen by the landlord.
He said: “The door had been closed and when she entered she estimated the floor was 90% covered in dog faeces, some of which had gone mouldy. She saw the two dogs which were clearly dead, and in a bad state of decomposition.
“She could see they were badly malnourished and they were riddled with maggots.”
Mr Mitchell said a post-mortem found the cause of death was likely to be dehydration, which would have taken around four days.
The court heard Davies admitted she had left the house, leaving a bowl of food and water, but then never went back.
James Hatton, defending, said his client had sunk into depression and had “buried her head in the sand.”
Speaking after the case, Inspector Smith told the Echo: “The vet told me the animals would have experienced dehydration very much like us, they would start to panic and pace up and down, then the headaches would start and then the nausea, and eventually they would lose consciousness.
“As far as I’m concerned she did this on purpose, she knew living things were in that house and she knew they would be dead. She could have asked her family for help, she could have asked her partner, she could have picked up the phone to us. The sentence shows we take this very seriously.”
“If she had asked for help she would not have been in court today and those dogs would be in new homes.”
Sentence: 16 weeks in prison, suspended for 18 months; 16-week curfew, monitored by an ankle tag; total of £615 costs and charges. Banned from keeping animals for life.