LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — "We got Luna when she was three weeks old. I would hold her in my hand, and she could barely fit in there. And she was just so sweet," said Victoria Cielo, whose six-year-old son had never known life without his dog.
That changed after Luna unexpectedly got out.
On Saturday, March 18, The Animal Foundation posted Luna's picture and information on its website. The next day, Cielo got an email saying, "I believe we have your animal at our shelter."
"I responded to the email right away," Cielo told 13 Investigates.
She also left multiple voicemail messages and got a call the following Monday, but was told Luna couldn't be reclaimed that day because The Animal Foundation is closed on Mondays.
She provided her ex-husband Raul's information, as he'd be picking Luna up. 13 Investigates confirmed Cielo continued leaving voicemail messages so she could pay the reclaiming fee to get Luna back.
"They didn't call me back until the next day, Tuesday, in the evening, almost 6 o'clock when they had called me back," Cielo said. "And the concerning thing is they weren't calling me back 'again.' There was a miscommunication there. They didn't have any of my emails or voicemail messages or anything."
Raul went to the shelter on Wednesday but, Cielo explains, "He was not allowed to reclaim Luna because they had a system outage."
The City of Las Vegas confirms its computer network was offline on March 22 from approximately 11 a.m. To 3:30 p.m., and during that time, the "logging software on the city's database was not accessible by the Animal Foundation."
"Their computer system goes down, why don't they have a back-up plan?" asked Bryce Henderson, animal welfare advocate and president of No Kill Las Vegas.
"If your system is down, if someone's there and says, 'This is my dog, here's a picture,' why can't you release the dog to them?" Henderson added.
The Animal Foundation told 13 Investigates it can't return animals to their owners when the system is down because they don't have access to medical and behavior notes or notes from Animal Protection Services.
"If they're having such a huge space issue that they have to put down animals," said Cielo, "I would expect if somebody's trying to reclaim their animal, to release them and then manually process them out afterwards."
Instead, Raul was turned away, as were approximately 30 other people, according to The Animal Foundation.
"He texted me, 'I just left, they wrote down my name and number, they're not releasing the dog, they're going to contact me when their system is back up,'" Cielo recalled.
But no one contacted him or her. Not that day or the next.
"So, come Friday, I'm like, 'you need to go get her back.' And it was too late," Cielo said.
The Animal Foundation had put Luna down. Victoria got the devastating news while driving with her son.
"And he thought that 'putting her down' meant putting her down for adoption, and he said, 'Maybe dad can go and adopt her then,'" Cielo said. "And I had to tell him, 'no, she's already...' I didn't have the heart to tell him. I had to tell him that she's already with another family, and he was so sad that he's never going to see her again. And if he only knew why..."
In a statement, The Animal Foundation called what happened to Luna a rare mistake.
WATCH THE FULL SERIES: 13 Investigates allegations of pets in peril at The Animal Foundation
"It's not a mistake that you can fix. A dog is dead. They killed her."
Henderson said, "When the systems come back up, OK, let's make sure we're covering all our bases, we've contacted everybody. But it seems like what they did is immediately start up the euth(anasia) train again and start euthanizing animals."
The Animal Foundation's most recent statistics show they euthanized 157 dogs in February, a nearly 47% increase from the same time last year.
No one from The Animal Foundation would go on camera for this story. Instead, they sent the following statement:
"As a team full of animal lovers, we are deeply committed to protecting the health and safety of animals in our care, and we regret falling short of that standard in this instance. While mistakes like this are extremely rare, it is our commitment to make the necessary changes to regain the trust and confidence of our community. We offer our sincerest apologies to Luna's family."
This is not the first time 13 Investigates has reported on a family's dog being killed by the Animal Foundation.
"And I was hysterical. My kids were hysterical and asking how and why you would kill their family member," said Tray Thomas, whose two dogs got out when their fence blew down in a windstorm in 2021.
A neighbor called Animal Control, who picked the dogs up and took them to the shelter. The family got one back, but the Animal Foundation killed the other while Thomas was desperately trying to reclaim her pets.
"All I was told was (them being) short of staff is their reason for not responding to me, not returning a phone call, not answering," Thomas said.
13 Investigates asked the city if the shelter would face any repercussions for violating the humane treatment clause of their contract.
We're still waiting for a response, but did get a statement from City Councilwoman Victoria Seaman, who wrote:
"While the city's roughly four-hour computer system outage on March 22 did impact the Animal Foundation, I am incredibly disappointed that during any system outage, they did not pause euthanizing animals to ensure mistakes like this don't happen. Every precaution should be taken when it comes to someone's animal. Sadly, that wasn't the case."
"These are people's pets, their family members," said Henderson, who says the Las Vegas animal rights community is done waiting for meaningful change at The Animal Foundation. "I'm not interested in their excuses, honestly. I would like to see some real changes and we just never can get that from them. We need to cut ties with The Animal Foundation."
13 Investigates asked The Animal Foundation why no one read Luna's notes about her owners being in contact, why they didn't pause euthanasia until all the people who were turned away during the system outage were contacted, how many people they actually did contact, and what specific changes they'll be making.
They did not answer any of those questions.
Clark County sent the following statement in response to our question about whether the Animal Foundation would face any consequences for killing Luna:
"Clark County has been meeting with the Animal Foundation leadership regarding a variety of issues and will continue to do so to ensure concerns are addressed and improvements are made. Regarding this particular matter, we believe suspending the euthanizing of animals during any computer outage would be the best course of action. It’s very important that the appropriate safeguards be put in place to prevent a recurrence."
