A B.C. man who started a dog rescue has been killed while saving animals in Ukraine.
Jesse Adams founded RainCoast Dog Rescue Society, which is based in Victoria on Vancouver Island.
Last Friday, Adams posted on Facebook that he was heading out on a rescue mission in eastern Ukraine.
Two days later, an FPV (first-person view) drone struck the vehicle he was using to transport the animals, according to the rescue society.
Adams suffered severe injuries and underwent emergency surgery, but doctors were unable to save him.
“The best thing I can say is Jesse was a force of nature,” Penny Stone, executive director of the Victoria Humane Society, told Global News.
“He was unbelievably go, go, go. Wherever help was needed, Jesse was. It didn’t matter. And I mean, it shows in that he went to Kabul and he went to Ukraine a number of times. He was just like wherever they needed help the most.”
Stone said Adams was someone who always stepped up and was there for every animal.
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“When he was in Ukraine, I know he was rescuing tigers and lions and different kinds of species, pigs and goats and stuff, and he would post about it and it was quite funny and we’d laugh about what he was doing,” she said.
“But I mean, he was just that guy, where it was needed.”
Stone said Adams also travelled to small communities to help the people living there.
“It’s a tragic loss. He was a real hero.”
Stone added that the space Adams left behind will be impossible to fill.
“He just believed every animal and every person deserved a chance and he never backed down for fighting for the little guy,” she said.
The RainCoast Dog Rescue Society posted to social media announcing Adams’ passing writing, “after a life lived in service to animal welfare, Jesse made the ultimate sacrifice to his beliefs on the front lines of Ukraine.”
Lori Kalef, the SPCA International Director of Programs, said she was stunned to hear the news.
“When I found out he passed away, I just couldn’t believe it,” she said.
“I still can’t believe it. I don’t think it has been properly processed.”
Adams is being remembered for his compassion, courage and the lives he worked to save.
It is estimated he and his team had evacuated as many as 1,000 animals from the war-torn country, including thousands more at home.
“Wherever there was a need, Jesse was there,” Kalef said.
“There is going to be a huge, huge hole. But I also feel that this is the kind of community that comes together, especially in the time of grief and the love for animals.
“I do believe that there is going to be a path forward.”
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