A three-month-old Husky puppy that was left in a car in the blistering Las Vegas heat last week is still undergoing medical treatment by animal control, authorities said in a statement on Thursday.
According to the statement, the dog was spotted by security around 3 p.m. on July 20 in a vehicle upstairs in a parking garage “with tape over its mouth.” The puppy was recovered through the car’s sunroof, police said. According to Accuweather, the temperature reached 113 degrees in Las Vegas that day.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police arrested the vehicle’s owner for “deliberate, malicious torture of animals” — a felony, according to the Nevada state code. The department has released the arresting officer’s body-camera images of the incident.
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The footage shows the officer approaching a gray SUV, where an unknown person, an apparent bystander, is watering the puppy.
“He had a lot of saliva,” the person says, mimicking the dog’s breathing patterns for the officer. “Like he couldn’t breathe.”
The owner of the vehicle, later identified as 50-year-old Raul Carbajal, soon appears on the bodycam footage and is arrested almost immediately.
“Do you know how hot it is outside?” the officer asks Carbajal. “You had the vehicle out, the windows open and you had tape on your dog’s mouth.”
The puppy was locked in the car for two hours while Carbajal was gambling, authorities found during their investigation, according to the statement.
