Prosecutors in Denver have charged a man with aggravated animal cruelty after police found a severely malnourished dog with cuts and sores inside a cage filled with feces and urine in his apartment.

On April 3, 2020, officers were sent to an apartment building in the 10700 block of East Dartmouth Avenue because of a strong odor coming from 30-year-old William Vernon’s apartment, according to an arrest affidavit released Wednesday by the Denver District Attorney’s Office.

The manager of the apartment complex told officers the odor had been getting stronger for over a week. Responding officers told investigators they believed there was a dead body inside the apartment because “the smell was so bad,” according to the affidavit.

The apartment manager was unable to reach the tenant, so a maintenance worker opened the door to the apartment to allow police to perform a welfare check. Once inside, officers found numerous health violations, including rotting food, according to the affidavit.

The black and white pit bull was standing up inside the cage because it was “unable to sit down, due to all the feces inside the cage, and the cage being too small,” according to the affidavit.

Police called Denver Animal Protection to the scene. Because there were five padlocks on the cage, officers took the entire cage to the shelter to extract the dog.

The dog weighed 41.2 pounds — about 14 to 20 pounds underweight — and officials estimated the dog was without food or water for two to three weeks, according to the affidavit.

When police returned to the apartment, Vernon ran from officers. But during their brief interaction, he told them the dog was not his — that it belonged to a friend and that the animal was microchipped.

The dog’s owner contacted police several days later and said he lost the dog “a while back” and put up flyers to try to find his pet.

The dog was reunited with its owner and is doing “extremely well with his recovery,” according to the attorney’s office.