Dear Officer Kryskowiak,

My neighborhood desperately needs your help with a badly troubled rental property at 1208 Brighton Road. I am hoping this is something that can be addressed through the PROP ordinance, if not criminal statutes.

This afternoon I found a terribly emaciated pit bull dog and another less emaciated one wandering the intersection of Millbank Street and Brighton Road; I managed to get the badly emaciated one to my yard and called Animal Control. Officer Barham came out and got the dog from me, and then I took him around the corner to the rental property at 1208 Brighton Road where the dogs lived and where the other loose dog was in the yard menacing passersby.

What Officer Barham and I found there was extremely upsetting. Besides the loose dog, which was extremely skittish and borderline aggressive, there was a crate of skinny puppies on the back porch and -- worst of all -- another adult pit bull very near death from emaciation lying in the shade of a neighbors' car. The yard is as always full of trash, and the smell there is just awful. I just left Officer Barham a few minutes ago; he had seized all of the dogs and was preparing to take the sickest one to be euthanized.

This is the same property I complained about to Mr. Robert Pearce at Inspections back in June when the tornado damage to the home still had not been addressed. Today there are still tornado-felled trees lying in the backyard. I am pasting the relevant portion of my June 24 e-mail to Mr. Pearce at the bottom of this e-mail so you have a copy of that; I would be happy to send you the full text if that would be helpful. Mr. Pearce is copied on this e-mail.

I find it very disturbing that this property is on Inspections' radar screen but is allowed to be in the state that we found it today.

This house is owned by K & E Properties LLC.

Here is the link to the property information from the Wake County tax records: http://bit.ly/nOY35K

Here is the information about the corporation from the N.C. corporations databases; the registered agent and manager is one Lucy Dixon at 5204 Rembert Drive in Raleigh: http://bit.ly/nOY35K

It is time for the city authorities to take serious action to remove this blight from our midst. Please let me know what can and will be done.

Sincerely,
Sue Sturgis
2119 Millbank St.
Cell: 919-841-3058

Here is the relevant portion of my June 24 e-mail to Mr. Pearce in Inspections:

The wider problem on this block: This block of Brighton Road is becoming severely blighted due to irresponsible landlords. Mr. Schrader owns the rental properties at 1217, 1209 and 1205 Brighton Road ... However, the problems with Mr. Schrader's properties are dwarfed in comparison to what's happening across the street at 1208 Brighton Road, a rental house is owned by K & E Properties (here is the corporation's information, including details about the managers: http://www.secretary.state.nc.us/corporations/Corp.aspx?PitemId=5009141). This property is a complete mess -- so bad that it's actually leading some neighbors to consider moving to escape the blight.

The yard, which is filled with junk cars, is often covered -- and I mean COVERED -- in trash. The tornado damage there still has not been addressed, with broken pieces of the house still hanging off the front and a large amount of tornado debris in the backyard. There are two pit bulls that are kept tied up in the backyard on a short chain; neighbors have said they do not have access to water and are kept there for long stretches in violation of the anti-tethering ordinance. I am not in a place to witness the illegal tethering, though I have met the dogs and am concerned about their condition. I do not know if the neighbors have reported the issues to Animal Control. There are young children living at this house, and I and other neighbors are concerned about the conditions they're living in.