UPDATED at 11:22 p.m.

AKRON — The Akron Petland store was shut down Wednesday by the chain's corporate office after a photograph was posted on Facebook that showed an employee holding dead rabbits.

Under the photo, Liz Carlisle, 20, of Ravenna, boasts to her friends that she drowned the rabbits because they were injured. She said in the entry that the store's manager took the photograph.

Carlisle is charged with two counts of cruelty to animals pressed by the Humane Society of Greater Akron. She is to appear on Aug. 17 in Akron Municipal Court. Petland officials said they terminated the owner's franchise agreement because of the "horrific mistreatment of rabbits at the Petland store in Akron."

"Petland will in no way, shape or form tolerate any abuse of animals in its care," company officials said in a news release. "We are outraged of this gross violation of Petland's animal care standards."

Investigators said Carlisle posted the photograph on her Facebook page on July 28, and in the post she tells her friends she had to drown the rabbits because they injured each other while fighting.

Petland officials said company policy bars employees from euthanizing any animal.

The animals in the Akron store were moved to another Petland.

Carlisle's father, Joe Carlisle, described his daughter as a well-behaved, respectful young woman who has done well in school and is working to pay her way through college.

"She is a good, good person who is innocent totally as a human being of any and all wrongdoing," he said. "She is being unfairly maligned."