Excalibur Euthanized, Incinerated: Teresa Romero Ramos’s Dog Killed Due To Ebola Scare

Excalibur was euthanized and then incinerated despite worldwide pleas and online petitions begging to save the animal. Teresa Romero Ramos is the nursing assistant from Spain who contracted Ebola after briefly assisting infected patient Manuel García Viejo, a Spanish missionary who contracted the virus in West Africa. Excalibur was Ramos’s dog.

Protesters gathered at the home of Teresa Romero Ramos in an attempt to prevent authorities from seizing the dog, but their efforts were futile. Excalibur was captured and placed inside a white veterinary van with blacked out windows. Police wielding batons forced a crowd of dozens away from the van to facilitate the vehicle’s exit from the apartment complex. The lifeless animal lay inside the van.

Madrid’s regional health agency released a statement announcing that they had euthanized Excalibur. The statement assured that the dog was “sedated beforehand to avoid suffering.” After the loyal family dog was killed, its lifeless body was “put into a sealed biosecurity device and transferred for incineration at an authorized disposal facility.”

According to MSN, the unfortunate decision to euthanize Excalibur was made despite a lack of evidence that Ebola may be spread from canines to humans.

By the time Excalibur was euthanized, multiple Change.org petitions to save him had garnered tens of thousands of votes in total. One such petition simply requested that more information be obtained before making the decision to euthanize Excalibur. Another petition asking to quarantine the dog instead of killing it has nearly 400,000 electronic signatures.

“Not only is it unfair to be infected with Ebola by the sanitary assistant due to the lack of necessary means, they must also lose their dog as a result of an thoughtless decision, as it would be much easier to isolate or quarantine the dog just as they have the victim’s husband. If this woman were to die, the dog which has accompanied them for so many years would be an important emotional support for her husband. This is not ‘just’ a dog, for this couple he is one of the family.”

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, Teresa Romero Ramos has revealed that she touched her face with her gloved hand after attending to infected Ebola patient Manuel García Viejo at Madrid’s Carlos III hospital. That may be the means by which she became infected with the virus. The incident happened as she was removing her protective suit. Ramos had entered the patient’s room only twice, once to change the patient’s diaper, and once to retrieve items from the room after he had already died, reported Yahoo!

Teresa Romero Ramos’s dog Excalibur was euthanized over concerns that the animal may have contracted the Ebola virus from its owner. Ramos’s husband, Javier Limón Romero, has been placed in quarantine for the same reason.

[Image via Change.org]