It’s been seven years since police started searching for three teenagers who threw a small dog to a pitbull in Stroud Township ending its life.
Since then monetary reward signs have been posted on multiple trees and utility poles near Blue Mountain Lake. Now the amount has not only grown nearly seven fold but the signs are naming someone who may know those involved.Kirk Tilton says, "They had the dog chained there in the one tree there and then they had this small little innocent dog, and they just picked the dog up and they just threw it to the pitbull. And the dog just attacked it."
Tilton takes us back today to the scene of the crime. We interviewed him in 2017 at the very same spot near the intersection of Wooddale and Pocahontas roads in Annalomink when he originally posted this reward to the telephone pole. Today that 15 hundred dollar amount has been changed to 10 thousand dollars.
Tilton says, "I just sometimes have visualization with what this poor dog went through and I’ve been doing foster and rescue for many years, like 30 plus years, and I just see cases that just gut wrenching and this is one I want closure on. And I’m just going to keep being persistent until we get them." But that’s not the only change— the sign also reads “Jerome Wilson give up your friends.” Tilton says, "We got a couple of anonymous calls that pointed to him. And then, he says I don’t care about an effing dog, I know about it yes, and I’m not going to give my boys up." The incident happened nearby in these woods. A passerby spotted three black teens in the act and rushed the dog to AWSOM Animal Shelter. President Rich Homar remembers running the dog they later named Peace to their Wellness Center but it was too late.Homar says, "It broke me up. I think when you interviewed me seven years ago on this, I was still very bothered by it. That was the first time I ever really saw a dog from a dog mauling attack look that bad."
It appears someone was upset the name was posted. Spray paint now blocks it out along with parts of the numbers on this sign near the corner of Woodale Road and Route 447. Tilton says, "It’s a no-brainer. We’re on to him and the heat is getting turned on." Homar hopes the increased reward will finally crack this case and give Peace the justice he deserves. Homar says, "No one knows who Peace belonged to and then when we found out there was three young kids involved and it was all the way up there by Blue Mountain Lake, I believe it was, this wasn’t like kids from Stroudsburg or East Stroudsburg that walked up there. They had to live up there or be visiting that area so I really thought when this case first happened, that we were going to catch a quick break." Either way, Titlon is never giving up. And anyone with information about the incident is asked to call the numbers on the poster or Stroud Area Regional Police.