Court Document: Man’s dog found ‘barely alive and lying in a pool of blood’

A criminal complaint document obtained by ABC-7 states police charged a man with animal cruelty after animal services officers found his dog dying in a pool of blood.

Last October, police officers assisted animal services on an animal cruelty case in East El Paso on the 100 Block of Maryland.

Animal Services responded to Christopher Royval’s home after he called and asked them to pick up the dog. “Upon their arrival, a brown female canine, believed to be a boxer, was lying on the garage floor barely alive and in a pool of blood,” the criminal complaint states.

According to the document, Royval told the animal services officers his 15-year-old dog Fergie was “bleeding from the nose and butt.” Royval further stated the dog had been okay the previous day.

One of the animal services officers observed the dog to be “severely emaciated and underweight and observed her ribs, lumbar, vertebrae and pelvic bones easily visible with obvious signs of loss of muscle mass,” the criminal complaint states.

The court document further states, “the canine had a hole on its back torso about two inches in diameter with maggots crawling in and around it.”

The officers removed the dog at Royval’s request and it was later assessed by the chief veterinarian. The criminal complaint states the veterinarian observed “multiple wounds visibly rotten with live maggots exiting from the anus, neck and back.”

The veterinarian determined the dog had been suffering for more than a week “due to the level of rotting and growth of maggots … and believed it had suffered an enormous amount of inhumane neglect,” the criminal complaint further states.

The canine was euthanized, police said.

When police interviewed Royval, he said the dog arrived at that condition overnight and that he had never noticed any maggots or the dog’s deteriorating condition.

A warrant was issued for Royval, 31, for cruelty to non-livestock animals (by torture). Royval turned himself in Tuesday, November 19, 2017. He was booked into the El Paso County Detention Facility with a bond of $5,000.