Four people have been arrested in Vietnam for habitually stealing dogs and selling them to slaughterhouses.
According to local media VN Express on the 12th, three men in their 20s, including Nguyen Van Thuyen (28), and a woman in their 40s, were arrested by the public security authorities in the Ngi Loc district of central Nghe An Province.
They are accused of stealing dogs from the area on more than 50 occasions in the two months since early June.
As a result of the public security investigation, the suspects found that two men were riding a motorcycle and knocked down a dog outside the house with a stun gun, and the remaining two men loaded it into a truck and fled.
In addition to stun guns, they also carried a variety of tools for stealing dogs and homebrew guns.
Occasionally, residents witnessed and followed the scene of the crime, but they fought and fled, police said.
Public security officials did not disclose the number of dogs they stole, but said they were converted to 2 million VND (100,000 won).
Vietnam is the second-largest country in the world for dog consumption after China, with 5 million slaughtered annually, the media reported.
Stolen dogs are usually sold to small, unauthorized slaughterhouses and then passed on to dog meat restaurants, the report said.
China is the world's largest consumer of dog meat, killing as many as 20 million dogs for human consumption each year.
(Photo = Yonhap News/VN Express site capture)