District Dogs will pay $100,000 to D.C. and make improvements to safety and emergency response, after a 2023 flood left 10 dogs dead.

Under a settlement reached with D.C.’s Office of the Attorney General, District Dogs must keep the store at 680 Rhode Island Avenue in Northeast permanently closed. That location flooded three times in 2022 — before the 2023 flood.

In an August 2023 interview with NBC Washington, District Dogs owner Jacob Hensley said that location was “officially closed. Forever.”

In the settlement, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb said District Dogs misled customers about the safety of their dogs and “downplayed the flooding and mentioned specific measures that District Dogs was taking to prevent future flooding issues, representing to Consumers that dogs would be safe in District Dogs’ care.”

D.C. alleged District Dogs misrepresented that each dog in its care would enjoy a safe and healthy experience, told customers flood prevention measures were sufficient to keep dogs safe, and failed to implement adequate training, emergency and evacuation procedures.

The settlement said “District Dogs denies all of OAG’s allegations and claims, including that it has violated any consumer protection laws.”

In a statement provided to WTOP, a spokesperson for District Dogs said: “To bring this matter to an end, and to avoid the continued financial strain on our small business from an unnecessarily prolonged process, we agreed to settle this matter with one important condition – that the Attorney General’s Office agree as part of the settlement that there is no admission of wrongdoing by District Dogs whatsoever.”

On Aug. 14, 2023, 10 dogs died inside the pet day care and grooming facility following a torrential downpour. Water rose nearly six feet in the span of a few minutes, to the middle of doors on District Dogs, before one of the walls gave out, according to D.C. Fire and EMS supervisors on the scene.

As part of the settlement, District Dogs will be required to obtain risk management certification for its locations, to include emergency response and evacuations specific to each facility.

Some of the procedures include designating evacuation route assignments, rescue and medical duties, a clear checklist of sequential steps, as well as a system to account for each dog on site during emergencies. In addition, an alarm system would notify employees of an emergency situation.

Separately, in May 2024, eight families whose dogs drowned at the District Dogs filed a negligence suit against Hensley.

According to the suit, filed in D.C. Superior Court, the dogs’ deaths were foreseeable and preventable, since the District Dogs location at 680 Rhode Island Avenue in Northeast had flooded repeatedly, including almost exactly one year before the 2023 flood.

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WASHINGTON (7News) — We’ve known that the DC Circulator buses in the District will be gone by the end of the year, but starting Tuesday, 90 bus employees will be laid off.

This is part of the city’s phase-out process to a bus system that has been around for two decades.

Since 2005, it has had an attractive, popular bus system. The DC Circulator bus system had 1.9 million riders last year and nearly 300 employees. About 78 Circulator employees have landed jobs with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), however, they will lose their seniority, and start at lower wages and different shifts.

Union reps have criticized transportation officials over the treatment of the circulator workforce.

READ MORE | Transit workers rally against DC Circulator shutdown, calls for Metro to take over

Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 689, one of the unions that represents the workers says it will continue to fight to retain current pay rates. It claims circulator employees had five-year contracts, and job security through 2028. But the mayor abruptly cut Circulator funding from this year’s budget.

Both sides spoke at a recent council transportation committee hearing.

“This has been bungled from the start DDOT never reached out to have any conversations with us, and the mayor’s office appears to have lost my number. However, to address the DDOT director and the mayor directly, let me be clear, we did not want to be here today,” said Matthew Girardi, Political & Communications Director for ATU Local 689.

”Behind me sit anxious parents, brothers, sisters, daughters and sons who have only wanted to do their jobs to the best of their abilities and to provide decent lives to their families. Currently, because there is no plan, the median DC Circulator employee is slated to lose by our estimate $76,062,” Girardi added.

READ MORE | Metro wants to fill gap from impacted DC Circulator routes, extend overnight service

Starting today, Oct. 1, routes will also begin to see changes. ‘

Service to Rosslyn-Dupont Circle will end, altering bus arrival times everywhere else to every 20 minutes instead of every 10 minutes. Late-night service on the Woodley Park-Adams Morgan and Georgetown-Union Station routes are also ending.

”DDOT and WMATA have worked to leverage Metro bus’ extensive network to provide continued bus access for Circulator customers, enhance service to key destinations,” said Sharon Kershbaum, Director of the District Department of Transportation.

“Upon the termination of the Circulator service on December 31, WMATA will provide expanded and supplemental bus service on key alternative routes to address the gaps from the legacy Circulator routes,” Kershbaum said.

For the Rosslyn-Dupont Circle route, D.C. bus route 38-B will now provide extended service between Rosslyn and Farragut Square during peak weekend hours. Metro bus routes 31 and 33 will be merged into a single route along H and I streets Northwest to Union Station.

WASHINGTON – D.C. police are investigating the death of a 1-year-old over the weekend as a homicide. 

Police identified the victim as Journee Moore, who lives in Upper Marlboro. 

Around 10:45 Saturday night, police got a call about a child in cardiac arrest inside an apartment building at the intersection of Connecticut Avenue and Rodman Street in Northwest D.C.

Moore was taken to Children’s National Hospital where she later died.

Sunday, the Medical Examiner’s Office did an autopsy and discovered Moore had multiple blunt force trauma injuries, and have determined her death was a homicide.

“That’s crazy. A 1-year-old, I just can’t get over the fact that it’s a 1-year-old. The baby is 1. Who would want to do something like that to a child?” said Lisha Quarles, who is a caretaker for a man who lives inside the apartment.

“I can’t even think about it. It’s too sad,” said Yana Vierboon, who lives in the neighborhood.

FOX 5 has learned the incident appears to be domestic in nature. 

No charges have been filed at this time nor have any suspects been named.