In addition to power outages and excruciating heat, an area in Northeast Ohio has encountered another obstacle, deadly water-related incidents including several drownings this month alone. And this past week, a toddler drowned in his very own swimming pool.

It was far from the normally peaceful Belden neighborhood that day as hospital sirens and police cars filled the streets on Belden Avenue. According to police reports, officers were called to the location of 3515 Belden Avenue, located on the southside of Youngstown, Ohio where they found three-year-old Kayden Braden dead. Kayden was being watched by his grandmother, Marcia Braden, at the time of the drowning.  The grandmother was watching several children in her home and had a four foot deep swimming pool she had got for Kayden.

Braden took all of the children into the house to take off their flotation devices and give them something to eat. After one young boy finished eating his cereal, he went back outside into the pool where he felt something hit his leg and thought it was a toy, but when he looked down he saw little Kayden lying at the bottom of the pool.

The young boy then proceeded to grab Kayden out of the pool where he layed him on the deck, screaming for help, and then Braden attempted to give her grandson CPR but he was unresponsive.

Police arrived at the scene at approximately 2:30 Wednesday afternoon, where they questioned Braden about what happened. Braden, who was crying hysterically, told officers that he initially came inside but must have gone back out to the pool when she was tending to the other children. Shortly thereafter she collapsed after having trouble breathing when police were talking to her. She was then rushed to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital by ambulance.

As Kayden was rushed off to the hospital, neighbors and spectators stood outside their homes praying for Kayden. He was taken to Akron Children’s Hospital Boardman Campus where he was officially pronounced dead with the cause of death being drowning.

According to Detective Sargent Doug Bobovick, “The incident does not seem to involve any foul play.” Police are investigating, and even though it’s very early on in the investigation, Detective Bobovick believes that it was just a horrible accident.

In the tri-county area including Mahoning, Columbiana and Trumbull counties, several people have died as a result of drowning this past year, five of which are in the month of July alone.

Mark Goodrich, a 12-year-old boy from Sharon, Pennsylvania, just over the Ohio border went swimming with friends two weeks ago in the Shenango Valley River and went missing. He was found dead the next day on the side of the river by a local resident.

Three others have also drowned in the region two weekends ago, all in different locations, and all were ruled as “accidental drownings.”

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Statistics suggest that only 1/3 of new puppies live their life in their first home. The other 2/3 are abandoned, put in shelters, or given to others in the hope that the right home will cure the problem.

About 60% of the 2/3 that are given away are eventually euthanized, according to the Humane Society of the United States. This amounts to millions of dogs being killed each year and one more dog was just added to that list. No, it wasn’t put in a shelter, or given to a good home or even simply abandoned. Instead, it was brutally murdered.

The dog, described as a “young 100 pound black lab” was found dead by an elderly man who was walking his dog, when he spotted something suspicious on the side of Butcher Road, a country road located in Northeast Ohio. The dog was found with a bag over his face and duct tape completely wrapped around his head, then placed inside a trash bag.

The dog was wearing a red collar with a blue tie around it that had been cut off when it was found inside the trash bag, and the bag over its head was uncovered. The Salem Police Department said that the dog most likely died from suffocation.

The owner has been identified and went to the police station to identify the dog’s collar and the blue cable. The owner, who is not under suspicion for the crime, was the last person to see the dog alive last Tuesday evening. The dog was always outdoors, and the owner believes that his female lab chewed through her cable and got loose. Since the beginning of the investigation, the local police station has received more than twenty phone calls and over ninety Facebook hits thus far.

Thanks to a generous contribution from good samaritan and area resident Alan Price, a $500 reward has been put up for any information about the person who killed this helpless animal.

The Salem Police Department and the Columbiana County dog warden plan to continue investigating until the perpetrator of this vicious crime is found. If anyone has any information about the dog’s killer please contact Alan Price at 330-692-3562 or e-mail him at alanprice@sbcglobal.net. You can also contact the Salem Police Department at 330-337-7811.

To help prevent animal cruelty from happening in your area, check out your local animal shelters or go to “The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals” at: www.ASPCA.org.

Image Courtesy of   Phil Ostroff

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