“Those guys are always going to be in my heart,” Branch said Tuesday at Super Bowl Media Day.

PHOENIX — Patriots defensive tackle Alan Branch has a heavy heart as he prepares for his first Super Bowl this week.

Those “guys” were Branch’s four dogs that died early in the morning on June 21. They were four victims in an incident known out here as the “Gilbert 23,” for the 23 dogs that died when 28 were stuffed into a 9-by-12-foot room at the Green Acre Boarding Facility in the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert.


Tonka was a Staffordshire bull terrier. Francis was a hound mix. Buick was an English bulldog. And Snickers was a deaf and blind toy Manchester terrier.

Branch and his wife, Ashley, are huge dog lovers and at one point had six living with them and their daughters, age 7 and 1½.

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office determined the dogs likely suffocated. Only Tiny, the Branches’ Great Dane, survived the tragedy.

“It was definitely rough,” Branch said. “I’m bouncing back slowly but surely from the loss. I just tried to be a rock for my family. Fortunately we’re getting through it. The kids aren’t crying or waking up crying missing their dogs right now. I think we’re doing better.”

Branch, who began his NFL career with the Arizona Cardinals and lives here in the offseason, put his five dogs in the boarding facility to attend Bills minicamp last summer when he was still a member of that organization.

“We found them, I believe, on Yelp, and they had some really good reviews,” Branch said of Green Acre. “We went to their house and everything. We saw that they had over an acre of property, and the dogs could run and do whatever. It looked better than just boarding them up in a random place.”


Branch was actually attending a funeral on his way back to Arizona when he got a phone call from the owners at Green Acre. According to a statement Ashley Branch gave to police, the owners told her one of her dogs had chewed through the metal fence and electric wire, and that all four had escaped. By the time they found the dogs, the owner said, they had died from heat exhaustion.

Except the Sheriff’s Office discovered a different story, the details of which are more than a little disturbing.

The owners of Green Acre, Jesse and Maleisa Hughes, went on a trip to Florida without telling any of the dog owners, and they left the dogs in the care of Austin and Logan Flake.

The 28 dogs were crammed into a room with one air conditioning vent, two doors sealed shut, and a third door sealed with weather stripping.

Logan Flake told authorities that she had checked on the dogs around 11 p.m. and they seemed fine. But when she checked on them again at 5:30 a.m., several of them had died and several others were severely ill. The air conditioning either broke or malfunctioned, and the dogs suffocated.

The Flakes tried to hose down the dogs with water and place ice cubes under the arms and thighs of the living dogs, but didn’t seek any professional medical advice, and all but five of the dogs eventually died.


The Flakes then placed the dead dogs in a shed out back, and when authorities arrived, the floor was covered in flies and maggots.

In August, a grand jury charged the Hugheses with 22 felony counts and seven misdemeanor counts of cruelty to animals, plus one felony count of fraud. The Flakes were charged with 21 felony counts and seven misdemeanor counts of cruelty to animals.

The incident has sparked outrage across the Valley, as Maricopa County attorney Bill Montgomery dropped all but the one fraud charge in late December. The official reason was that it is unclear whether the dogs suffocated because of neglect or because of a faulty air conditioning system.

But protestors who demonstrated outside Montgomery’s office believe the decision was politically motivated. Austin Flake, one of the caretakers, is the son of Arizona Republican senator Jeff Flake. Montgomery said he may consider refiling charges, but there are no plans to do so as of now.

One of the hardest parts for Branch, 30, was breaking the news to his daughter that four of their dogs wouldn’t be coming home.

“It was rough,” he said. “Just told her the truth, and basically dealt with it from there. She took it well for being a little 7-year-old girl. She’s a tough one.”

The Branches had a memorial service for the dogs, but Alan Branch, an eight-year NFL veteran who joined the Patriots in October, couldn’t be there for his family, as he had to report to Bills camp.


Branch said he and his wife are looking into getting new dogs soon, but filling the void in his heart won’t be easy.

“I just want justice,” Branch said. “And if anything, for Arizona to have stricter laws on what can be considered a boarding facility.”

Ben Volin can be reached at ben.volin@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @BenVolin.