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A Multnomah County grand jury this week returned a six-count indictment against a 44-year-old Portland woman, accusing her of killing her brother's dog.

(Aimee Green/The Oregonian)

A 44-year-old Portland woman pleaded not guilty Wednesday to allegations that she drowned her brother's dog.

A Multnomah County grand jury this week returned a six-count indictment against Laura D. Carney-Herrara, charging her with two counts of first-degree aggravated animal abuse, two counts of first-degree animal abuse, second-degree animal abuse and first-degree animal neglect.

But investigators suspect the two-year-old dog named Fred was killed sometime between January and March.

An anonymous tip to the Oregon Human Society led to an investigation by the society's special agent Allen Zaugg.

When Zaugg went to Carney-Herrera's home in Southeast Portland, she told him she'd been waiting to tell her story so she could stop having nightmares, Multnomah County prosecutor Nicole Jergovic wrote in an affidavit filed in court this month.

This is the dog, Fred, who was killed, according to his owners.

As she sat on her front porch, Carney-Herrera said she'd been taking care of her brother's dog Fred, who kept defecating on the floor and wouldn't eat, the affidavit said.

She said she had asked her brother to come and get the dog, but he never did.

One day, after she had just gotten out of the hospital and went home to take a nap, she told Zaugg she woke up and the dog again had defecated on the floor.

"She got upset and kicked him in the butt, and he yelped and ran crooked into the bathroom and kept yelping,'' the affidavit said.

"She said that when she saw that he was bleeding and yelping and couldn't stand on his back legs and kept falling over she was afraid that people would think she was a bad person for hurting Fred so she put him in a plastic tub,'' the affidavit said.

Carney-Herrera told the investigator that she put the plastic tub in her bathtub and filled it with water and drowned Fred, Jergovic wrote in the affidavit.

Carney-Herrara asked her son to bury the dog, authorities said.

Her son told a Multnomah County animal services officer that his mother had called him sometime in January. He came by her apartment and found Fred dead in a plastic tub full of water, the affidavit said.

A neighbor who was interviewed by an investigator reported seeing Carney-Herrara around Christmas time with a broken toe, and said Carney-Herrara told her that she broke it when "she kicked the dog,'' according to prosecutors.

Carney-Herrara was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center on July 9 and remains in custody.

She also faces unrelated allegations of harassment and fourth-degree assault. Those charges stem from an alleged incident at Portland Adventist Hospital on March 9, when Carney-Herrera was in the ER being treated for pneumonia. As nurses were trying to treat her, she's accused of struggling with them and kicking a nurse in the ribs, according to court records.

--Maxine Bernstein