NorCal animal rescue resumes operation during ongoing mass grave investigation

A Humboldt County animal rescue tied to a mass animal grave investigation is taking in and putting animals up for adoption again after county officials lifted its permit suspension.

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Miranda’s Rescue in Fortuna had faced a suspension from the Humboldt County Planning and Building Department over alleged land-use violations at the property. But Vanessa Shakib, an attorney representing the woman who helped expose the rescue’s mass dog grave, said the county proceeding is outside the broader allegations surrounding owner Shannon Miranda.

In an Aug. 6 letter to Humboldt County Planning and Building Director John Ford, Miranda’s attorney, Allison Jackson, disputed the county’s position that euthanasia and animal burial were prohibited. Jackson argued that the permit bars a “euthanasia facility,” not the act of euthanasia itself, and that county rules allow animal carcasses to be buried on private property under certain conditions. 

She also wrote that Miranda’s Rescue had not accepted new animals since early May and was working to adopt out those remaining. SFGATE reached out to Miranda’s legal team but did not hear back before the time of publication. 

Shakib, the co-founder and co-director of Advancing Law for Animals, told SFGATE that the county’s decision “is not an exoneration.”

“The permit suspension concerned local land-use compliance,” she said. “Whether Mr. Miranda committed animal abuse and fraud is a wholly separate matter.”  

The renewed operations come months after law enforcement excavated 117 intact dog remains and 21 sets of skeletal remains from Miranda’s property during a June search. Eight other dead dogs had previously been recovered in April. In a search warrant for a raid on the property viewed by SFGATE, Miranda allegedly admitted to investigators that he sometimes shot dogs himself, occasionally as many as 10 per month, using a .22-caliber rifle. 

Records seized during the investigation showed only about 116 documented adoptions among several hundred dogs taken into the rescue during a roughly 16-month period, while the disposition of hundreds of others could not be determined, according to a complaint Shakib submitted last month to California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

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Jennifer Raymond, Miranda’s neighbor and a longtime animal rescuer who helped uncover the burial site, has asked Bonta’s office to pursue the involuntary dissolution of Miranda’s Rescue and appoint a receiver to take control of its remaining animals and preserve the nonprofit’s assets. Her attorneys said they have received no update from the attorney general’s office.

Shakib said the resumption of intakes and adoptions makes that request more urgent. “There has never been a more urgent time for the attorney general to act,” she said.

According to the complaint submitted to Bonta, Miranda initially told investigators that the dogs were generally euthanized by a veterinarian, but investigators found no local veterinarian who regularly provided those services for him. He later acknowledged that he sometimes sedated the dogs before shooting them, the complaint said. 

When investigators showed him dogs recovered with wounds near their eye sockets after he said he shot animals in the back of the head, Miranda said the animals had moved during the shooting, the complaint alleged. 

“He has been caught changing his story, and he is sitting on a pet cemetery,” Shakib said. “It is amazing we have not thrown the book at this man.”

No criminal charges have been filed against Miranda.