Petition: The Dothan Grooming Shop Had No Power Since June. The Cats Were Still Inside.

The smell reached the neighbouring shops first. For weeks, businesses in Northside Plaza in Dothan, Alabama complained about an odour coming from JoJo’s LaundroMutt, a pet grooming shop on Ross Clark Circle that had gone dark. On 20 August 2026 Dothan Animal Services finally went in. They found several cats dead in their enclosures and other animals still alive in cages beside them. Police said it was clear the animals had been left unattended for about a month. Brandi Leann Tyrrell, 41, was arrested on 25 August and charged with two felony counts of first-degree cruelty to a cat and six counts of animal cruelty. Please sign the petition demanding a lifetime ban on owning or working with animals.

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Two facts from the investigation explain how a month passed. The business had been without active utility service since June, meaning no lights, no air conditioning through an Alabama summer, and no water. And surrounding businesses told police that Tyrrell had not been seen at the premises for at least three weeks. This was not a lapse over a long weekend. Animals were locked in cages in a closed, unpowered building in July and August heat, and the ones who survived did so alongside the bodies of the ones who did not. She has been charged and not convicted, and is entitled to due process.

The reason the petition asks for a ban on working with animals rather than just owning them is the specific thing this case turns on. A grooming business is a licensed-feeling arrangement that people hand their pets to on trust, and the animals inside it were there because that trust existed. An ownership ban addresses a household; it does not stop someone opening another business. Alabama treats first-degree cruelty to a cat as a felony, which gives a court real latitude, and what a court decides about future access to animals matters more here than the sentence length. It is also worth noticing who actually raised the alarm. Not an inspector, not a licensing body, but the shops next door, repeatedly, about a smell. One Green Planet has covered how to report suspected animal cruelty, and the arrest is reported by WTVY. The surviving animals were removed by Animal Services officers.

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