An Adams Township woman, charged with animal cruelty and driving under the influence, was sentenced to the county Intermediate Punishment Program on Thursday.

Renee C. Lerch, 60, was sentenced to 5 years in the Intermediate Punishment Program, with 105 days on house arrest with electronic monitoring, as well as a $1,500 fine and 100 hours of community service.

Butler County Judge William Shaffer also ordered Lerch to pay court costs and attend an Alcohol Highway Safety School and a Victim Impact Panel. She was given time served credit for 19 days spent in inpatient rehabilitation treatment.

Also as part of the sentence, she was ordered not to own or care for animals for about 2½ years.

Lerch previously pleaded guilty to 11 summary counts of animal cruelty and one count of DUI with highest rate on April 2.

During sentencing Lerch thanked “everyone that supported me through this.”

“I'm very, very sorry for all of it,” she said, describing how counseling has helped her. “I just feel a lot of support and gratitude. I feel like a better person, a stronger person having gone through this.”

She was initially charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct and 31 counts of animal cruelty after an incident in Adams Township on April 27, 2017, when Adams Township Police said nine “severely neglected” dogs and one dead dog were discovered in her home on Broadstone Drive. Police said the animals were living in “deplorable” conditions and needed to be removed. The dead animal that was found was about 70 pounds and had been dead for about three days, police said. The residence was in a similar state, buried in excrement and garbage bags, police said.

Police removed the dogs and a veterinarian from the Good Shepherd Veterinary Hospital assessed the animals at the scene and took the nine dogs to his clinic to start treatments until they were taken to the Butler County Humane Society shelter.

The DUI charge stems from an incident on July 26, 2017, in Mars borough. Lerch was charged with DUI, DUI highest rate, resisting arrest and a summary traffic count, after Adams Township police were called for a report of a possible DUI driver around 7:06 a.m., when the caller witnessed a vehicle driving slowly and hitting a curb, before the woman driving got out, naked.

The vehicle was unable to be found, but about an hour later, another call was made for a vehicle pulled off the road with a naked driver in the 100 block of Forsythe Road. Police said the vehicle was blocking half of the traffic lane and human feces were found beside the opened driver's side door, with Lerch inside also covered in feces.

The affidavit states that Lerch was highly intoxicated. An open vodka bottle was also found inside the vehicle, police said.

Quality EMS responded to take her to UPMC Passavant Cranberry. Police had to use force to remove her from her car and place her on a stretcher, the criminal complaint states, and she was taken to the hospital, where her blood alcohol content was found to be 0.270 percent.