Facebook posting from worried friend of suspect Tajah Horner Connelly

Oceanside police responded to a call from the public library at 4:30 pm on Saturday May 13.

Patrol officer Ryan Heinze spoke to a tall man named Dominick, “He told me that he had tied up his dog right outside the front door of the Oceanside library.” Officer Heinze testified at a pre-trial hearing weeks later. Dominick told the cop someone stole his dog, “He was rather frantic.”

Dominick said he was a homeless veteran, and his six-year-old, red pitbull named Misha was his emotional support dog. Dominick said he filled out a form online, which cost him $150, and then he got an ID card and a vest for the dog in the mail, and so Misha was his registered service animal.

The service dog Misha. “Everywhere I go people love her,

Dominick got Misha when she was a small puppy, he said he was able to see both parents, and he believed his puppy was a purebred pitbull. The seller wanted $1,200 for a puppy, but Dominick chose the runt of the litter for $700; Dominick said it took him some months to pay off that amount. “Everywhere I go people love her, people give her water and pet her at the grocery store,” Dominick told a judge at a hearing on May 30.

Dominick said he paid $463 to get Misha spayed, and a vet charged $550 to treat her for a stroke, and then her ligaments went out and he paid the vet $800 for that. (Dominick told the judge the vet wrote “Staffordshire” on the paperwork but he couldn’t pronounce that and didn’t know what it meant.) When he reported Misha missing to the police officer, he valued his dog at $2,500, but actually she was “priceless,” Dominick told the judge.

On that Saturday May 13, at the library, officer Heinze spoke with a librarian, and they reviewed security footage. The camera had a clear view of Dominick when he tied up his red pitbull outside the library just after 1 pm. It was cool and cloudy that day, but Dominick did bring out a bowl of water for his dog. Different passersby stopped to pet the dog. At 1:27 a female walked up and petted the dog, then she untied the dog, and then she walked the dog westbound towards the Coast Highway.

The female suspect was wearing a camo jacket, and she had orange shoes, and the clear video showed blonde streaks in her darker hair, and she had unusual black streaks on her face from makeup.

Officer Heinze sent out a description of the suspect, and about an hour later Harbor Police reported a likely suspect walking a red pitbull at Oceanside Pier; this was less than a half mile from the library, about five blocks away. Oceanside police officer Cass first stopped the suspect, and then officer Heinze spoke with Tajah Horner Connelly, 31.

“She admitted the dog was not hers,” officer Heinze testified. The suspect said she took the dog and said she was doing the dog a service, and that any animal rights activist would take a dog tied up outside the library. She said she untied the dog to “liberate” it or that she was “freeing” the animal, like any animal rights activist would do, officer Heinze told the judge.

Oceanside police arrested Tajah Horner Connelly the afternoon of Saturday, May 13, and she has been held in Las Colinas women’s jail in Santee in lieu of $20,002 bail. Connelly already had two prior, active theft cases at the time of her new arrest.

Tajah Horner Connelly, 31, is listed on the San Diego County Sheriff’s jail website as a white female, brown hair and blue eyes, 5 feet 4 inches tall and 150 pounds.

After testimony from Dominick and officer Heinze, the attorneys and the judge tried to determine the value of the pitbull.

The cop testified that he did a google search for the value of a pitbull, and the display indicated a value of $2500 to $5000.

Prosecutor Brad Manering declared that the original asking price of $1,200 for the dog was “not an unfair estimation.” And Manering argued that he used the standard of “reasonable sale price in the general area of the theft,” although the prosecutor pointed out that “Misha cannot be replaced.”

Defense attorney Alvaro Gonzalez countered that the dog was six years old and “The dog has depreciated.” Gonzalez pointed out that the dog had ligament damage and a stroke, and the value of the dog did not increase because the owner spent money on it, “That makes no sense at all.” Gonzalez declared the pitbull “a common breed” and said, “You might be lucky to find a home for it.” The defense attorney also showed the judge “a fast search of Craigslist” on his own laptop computer, which he said “Shows puppies at $375.”

Judge Anthony Campagna listened to attorneys’ argument and then declared, “The people have not met their burden that Misha is worth over $950, even though she is priceless to her owner/human. The people have failed to meet their burden.” The judge then ordered the defendant to answer to a misdemeanor, instead of a felony, in the charge of theft of companion animal.

Connelly had three active theft cases in San Diego County and judge Campagna adjusted her bail so Connelly was held in lieu of $15,000.

When Connelly was next in court, on June 6, she pleaded guilty to grand theft of companion animal (her newest case) and petty theft (one of her other cases), and her third active theft case was dismissed in the deal. Connelly was released from custody and immediately sentenced to one-year probation; she must submit to searches by police (called “a fourth waiver”) and was ordered to stay away from the Oceanside library and the victims in each of her three cases.

On her Facebook page, Connelly stated that she moved from Oregon to California in 2011. She first appeared in criminal records in San Diego County in January of 2014, when she was 22. In a different Facebook post on November 8, 2020, a concerned person declared that Connelly went missing for ten days while she was camping in the Anza Borrego desert; a later post stated Connelly was found and that she went home.