Arabi man held on $100,000 bond after booked with 32 counts of aggravated cruelty to animals for 29 puppies and three older dogs found dead in his refrigerator/freezer; He claims he didn’t kill them

An Arabi man was being held on $100,000 bond after he was booked with 32 counts of aggravated cruelty to animals following the discovery of 29 dead puppies and three older dogs in his refrigerator/freezer, none of them with obvious signs of trauma, Sheriff James Pohlmann said.

Juan Toledo, 52, 301 Parish Drive, near Rowley Boulevard, claimed he didn’t kill the animals but offered no information on how they died, the sheriff said.

He was arrested late Tuesday night, Aug. 13, after the discovery which came after authorities were tipped off. He was arrested because either acts he committed, or outright neglect, resulted in the animals’ deaths, the sheriff said. There was no specific causes of death at this time but “it’s possible they were malnourished, simply not fed,’’ Sheriff Pohlmann said of the dogs.

A $100,000 bond was set on Thursday morning for Toledo by state District Judge Jacques Sanborn and the suspect is being held in St. Bernard Parish Prison in lieu of being able to make that bond.

No living animals were found at the house. The remains of the deceased dogs were turned over to the animal control division of St. Bernard Parish government.

Toledo was already out on $50,000 bond for an unrelated arrest in St. Bernard Parish from July 1 when he was booked with aggravated battery of a woman identified as his then-girlfriend. He also has served time in prison in the late 1980s and early 1990s for burglary in New Orleans and was arrested there on a murder charge in 1983 but apparently was never convicted, Sheriff Pohlmann said.

The woman Toledo allegedly beat, who said she broke up with him after the incident, was the one who called the Sheriff’s Office to report finding the dead dogs, saying she went to the house Tuesday evening to get things left there.

After she called authorities, Toledo was found by sheriff’s deputies about 8 p.m. while walking on West St. Bernard Highway not far from his residence and he was taken back to his home for questioning, Sheriff Pohlmann said.

The suspect signed a consent form for deputies to enter and after the dead animals were found sheriff’s detectives interviewed the suspect.

Twenty-nine of the dogs were puppies, some very small and possibly only weeks old when they died, Sheriff Pohlmann said, and three were older dogs of possible mixed German Shepherd breed.

Toledo, who denied killing any of them, basically said only they had died and he hadn’t taken the time to bury them, but rather had placed them in the refrigerator and freezer sections, the sheriff said. He offered no explanation of how they died, except to speculate the smallest ones may have been accidentally suffocated by a mother dog.

But the residence was dirty, with a heavy concentration of dog hair, Sheriff Pohlmnann said, as well numerous dead fleas and live and dead roaches.

There weren’t any obvious signs the dogs had been tortured and no signs of death by shooting or cutting, the sheriff said. Officials at the parish animal shelter may be able to determine more about the deaths, he said.