Ice.
Days after federal prosecutors announced charges against three people accused of using the dog as leverage in a dispute over a vehicle, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro shared a photo of the Husky at the center of the case.
The photo shows Ice stretched out on an outdoor chair in a blue harness, staring directly into the camera.
“This is Ice, the defenseless Husky who was stolen and executed,” Pirro wrote. “We will speak for Ice and for all the dogs who cannot speak for themselves.”
The photo puts a face to a case prosecutors say began on July 8, when a dispute broke out between Tierra Love, 38, and Ice's owner over Love's use of a vehicle.
According to the indictment, Love and Keith Packer, 35, both of Suitland, began making plans to harm the man and his dog before bringing 36-year-old DC resident Antwon Sockwell into the alleged scheme.
Three days later, prosecutors say, Love and Packer stole Ice from his owner's Maryland home and drove him across state lines to Sockwell's apartment building in Washington.
Love and Packer also allegedly made threatening phone calls and sent threatening text messages to Ice's owner. Later that day, Packer drove Love and Sockwell back to Maryland, where the three confronted Ice's owner over the vehicle.
He refused to give them access to it because Ice had not been returned, according to the indictment.
The three then drove back to DC without the vehicle.
That's when prosecutors say Packer sent Ice's owner two messages:
“all dawgs (sic) go to” and “anything you wanna say last?”
Minutes later, prosecutors allege, one of the three took Ice into a nearby alley and shot him in the head with a 9mm handgun, killing him.
Investigators later recovered a 9mm firearm while executing a search warrant at Sockwell's DC home, though authorities have not said whether it was the weapon used to kill Ice.
A federal grand jury indicted Sockwell, Packer and Love on Sept. 18 on charges of animal crushing, conspiracy, interstate communications with intent to extort, interstate stalking, and using or carrying a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence. The indictment was unsealed on Wednesday, Sept. 23.
Love was arrested in Virginia and made her initial appearance in federal court in DC. Sockwell is being detained pending trial, while Packer was already in custody in Maryland on state charges when the indictment was announced.
Sockwell and Packer face a mandatory minimum of five years in prison on the firearm charge if convicted, to run consecutively to any other sentence. Animal crushing carries a maximum seven-year prison term. Love faces up to seven years on the animal crushing charge.
Pirro previously accused the three of terrorizing Ice's owner and taking his dog hostage as part of a “calculated scheme to extort him.”
Now, days after the allegations first became public, prosecutors are making sure the dog at the center of the case is more than an unnamed victim in a federal indictment.
His name was Ice.
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