2013 story: No Kill El Paso founder debunks recent accusations

The founder of No Kill El Paso disagrees with recent claims made by former volunteers.

John Conwell said he only chose to dissolve No Kill El Paso when he found out animal foster parents were resigning. At that point, he stopped taking in dogs, and offered to spay and neuter those already under the groups care.

According to him, he had to transfer money from the rescue’s account into his own to ensure veterinarian bills were paid.

Conwell was able to show ABC-7 text messages between him and volunteers who thanked him for paying for medical bills after No Kill was dissolved.

And while he had the best of intentions for his group, he now plans on caring for abandoned dogs as an individual.

“We had a failure in protocols,” Conwell said. “Not all the procedures were followed. We had a shortage of volunteers. Our record keeping was haphazard but we tracked everything. But yes, I take responsibility for our failures. It’s unfortunate. I thought we were doing things correctly but in some cases it’s proven that we didn’t.”

Conwell told us ‘no kill’ saved about 100 dogs before closing its doors after just a year.