Man arrested for animal cruelty after dog found tied to post in floodwaters ahead of Hurricane Milton
(TAMPA, FL) — The former owner of a dog that was left tied to a post off a Florida highway in floodwaters ahead of Hurricane Milton’s landfall has been arrested for animal cruelty, officials announced Tuesday.
The dog was found up to its chest in floodwaters off Interstate 75 in Tampa on Oct. 9, as many residents were evacuating due to Milton, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
A state trooper rescued the dog, now known as Trooper, the department said. Florida Highway Patrol shared a video on social media last week of the dog tied to the post with the caption, “Do NOT do this to your pets please…”
The former owner of the dog — identified by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles as Giovanny Aldama Garcia, 23, of Ruskin, Florida — was arrested on Monday for aggravated animal cruelty, a felony.
State Attorney Suzy Lopez, whose office is prosecuting the case, also announced the arrest on Tuesday, saying, “We take this crime very seriously and this defendant will face the consequences of his actions.”
Aldama Garcia was released Tuesday on $2,500 cash bond, according to online jail records. ABC News’ attempts to reach him were unsuccessful. Online court records do not list any attorney information.
(NEW YORK) — A dog breeder has been found dead and as many as 10 of his Doberman puppies have gone missing as police investigate his death as a homicide, authorities said.
The Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado along with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the 5th Judicial District Attorney’s Office are investigating the death of 57-year-old Paul Peavey, who had last been heard from on the night of Aug. 19 and was reported missing the evening of Wednesday, Aug. 21, according to a statement from the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office released on Monday.
Three days later, the body of an adult male was discovered just before noon last Saturday by a privately organized search party, police said.
Later that day, the coroner’s office confirmed the identity of the deceased to be that of Mr. Peavey and officials said they would conduct an autopsy to determine the cause and manner of his death, according to the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office.
Peavey had been a breeder of Doberman dogs, and it was reported that many of his Doberman puppies were missing from his property following his death, police said.
While authorities have not yet determined a motive in the homicide, the puppies’ whereabouts are part of the ongoing investigation, Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office said in their statement.
“We can confirm that many puppies are unaccounted for, possibly as many as 10, and we are asking for the public’s help in the following ways,” said the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office. “The unaccounted-for Doberman puppies may have been sold through social media sites or by other means since Tuesday, August 20. All of Mr. Peavey’s puppies are microchipped. Anyone who purchased a Doberman puppy in the central Colorado area within the last week is encouraged to check the puppy for a microchip and contact the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office at 303-679-2393 or admin@clearcreeksheriff.us. We would then be able to determine if the puppy was one of Mr. Peavey’s.”
“Anyone who purchased a puppy through Mr. Peavey’s business, Elite European Dobermans, since June 2024 is also asked to contact the Sheriff’s Office. Please contact us if you received the puppy that was purchased or if you did not receive the puppy. This will help us determine exactly how many puppies are unaccounted for,” authorities continued.
The investigation is in its very early stages and police said that they would release additional information “that does not compromise the investigation or future court proceedings” in due course.
Police emphasized that locating Peavey’s unaccounted for puppies may also help solve his homicide.
“We have gotten several tips regarding the puppies that are unaccounted for, and we appreciate all the information that has been sent to us,” authorities said.
Anyone with information about this investigation is asked to call the Sheriff’s Office non-emergency number at 303-679-2393, or submit a tip via email at crime_tips@clearcreeksheriff.us.
(NEW YORK) — Meeting an exotic animal at a public attraction can fill us with wonder, but critics say that this can also be dangerous. Dana Garber said she had just such an encounter at the Endangered Ark Foundation in Hugo, Oklahoma, in 2021.
She thought their family trip would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get close to the world’s largest living land animals.
“It was my youngest son’s birthday,” she told ABC News. “It seemed like for his birthday, it was a wonderful thing. Something we could do as a family.”
The foundation advertises itself as a sanctuary for retired circus elephants, making them a popular attraction in the state.
“I was under the impression that this was a place that was a good place for these elephants to live out their lives after their circus life,” Garber said.
Their day kicked off with the elephants, along with their handlers, greeting the family by bringing them breakfast, according to Garber. Afterwards, she recalled that they fed the elephants graham crackers over a metal fence.
“We were encouraged to pet them,” she said. “We were encouraged to go up to them.”
She recalled taking photos as she says an elephant grabbed her father-in-law with its trunk. She took more photos as she said her husband distracted the towering animal with graham crackers so it would let go of his father. However, to her horror, she said that the same elephant then grabbed her as she tried to walk past it.
“I can tell you that it felt like an anaconda,” she said, referring to the species of snake that constricts its prey. “I was being squished and held very tightly, after the elephant grabbed me and kind of swung me and thrashed me to the ground.”
Garber isn’t alone in claiming to have been injured by an exotic animal at a public attraction. ABC News reviewed government records, lawsuits and local reports to find at least 150 people over the past decade who have alleged they were injured during exotic animal encounters in the U.S.
After the incident, Garber noted that foundation staffers rushed to her aid, offering her ice. She says no one, including her, realized how seriously she had been injured. However, she said her husband — a radiologist — grew increasingly concerned over time.
“He said I wasn’t speaking coherently,” she said. “And at that point, he decided we have to get her immediately to the emergency room.”
Garber said scans revealed the extent of the damage to her knee.
“It had a lateral and a medial tibial plateau crush injury,” she said. “That along with the head injury.”
She told ABC News it has taken almost two years and multiple surgeries for her to regain function of her leg.
In the process of sorting out some of the medical bills, Garber said she reached out to Endangered Ark Foundation to get in touch with their insurance company. She said the company left a voice message suggesting she fell at their location.
“All kinds of hairs stood up on the back of my neck,” she said. “There is absolutely no way that you can get the kind of injury I sustained just by falling.”
Garber eventually filed a lawsuit, which they settled out of court without any admission of wrongdoing by Endangered Ark Foundation. The company told ABC News that they strongly refute all allegations.
“The family of Mrs. Garber continued to enjoy a full day at the foundation after the alleged incident,” it said in a statement.
Since the day she said she sustained her injuries, Garber claims to have discovered that some of the elephants at the sanctuary aren’t retired at all, and are allegedly still performing under a license for a circus called Carson & Barnes. The founders of that circus opened up the Endangered Ark Foundation in 1993 to serve as a retirement ranch for circus elephants, they say.
The circus didn’t respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
“I was under the impression that this was a true reserve and that these elephants were retired elephants that we would be seeing,” Garber said.
The Endangered Ark Foundation is one of at least 900 facilities in the U.S. that offers human interactions with wild or exotic animals as part of their business. According to critics, some of these places — known as roadside zoos — are not accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums and many have a bad track record in their treatment of animals.
In 2020, the Netflix series “Tiger King” shined a light on several such locations — particularly the since-shuttered Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park, which was founded and owned by Joe Exotic.
In the wake of “Tiger King,” the Big Cat Public Safety Act was enacted in 2022. The law prohibits public contact with big cats and the new breeding of cubs for private possession.
The Humane Society of the United States, a nonprofit organization that focuses on animal welfare, investigated Exotic’s Oklahoma roadside zoo years before “Tiger King” made him infamous.
Humane Society CEO Kitty Block said her organization often steps in to investigate these facilities because the Department of Agriculture (USDA), which is charged with overseeing them, is either too slow or does too little to act.
The Humane Society highlighted Tiger Safari in Tuttle, Oklahoma, as an example. They first recorded undercover footage of people interacting with tiger cubs there in 2014, after which the USDA filed a complaint and fined the zoo $15,000.
At the time, the founder Bill Meadows told local news outlets that his park was among the cleanest in the state and that the animals were treated well. He claimed the negative publicity came because the Humane Society wanted to cut out private zoo ownership, and that his zoo had corrected the USDA citations.
However, the Humane Society returned in 2021 and discovered that the facility had moved on to promoting interactions with other animals, including otter cubs.
The USDA cited them again for causing “unnecessary discomfort.” In total, the USDA has cited Tiger Safari at least 90 times in the past decade for issues like inadequate vet care and unsanitary conditions.
Tiger Safari did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
“The USDA is not even enforcing the meager standards that are there,” Block told ABC News. “They are stretched too thin.”
The USDA told ABC News, in part, that they take enforcement of the federal law seriously, and that they “work with facilities to ensure they comply.”
The agency said that if a facility is consistently unable to achieve compliance, that they are referred for investigation to determine if enforcement actions like “license suspension and revocations” are appropriate.
Advocates said it’s often their responsibility to work to shut such places down. In 2020, Special Memories Zoo in Wisconsin was sued by the Animal Legal Defense Fund for violating the Endangered Species Act. It also alleged that the zoo violated state law by “operating as a public nuisance because it was violating animal cruelty laws.”
A month after the lawsuit was filed, the zoo announced it would close and begin transferring animals to different facilities. However, a fire broke out and allegedly revealed serious neglect of its animals.
Police were dispatched to the property, and footage from their body cameras shows the officers discussing how several of the animals had starved to death before the flames erupted.
Instead of going to roadside zoos to see animals, advocates recommend doing so at locations accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, a nonprofit dedicated to the advancement of zoos and public aquariums in the areas of conservation, education, science, and recreation.
The Smithsonian Zoo in Washington, D.C., is one such facility, and it maintains a strict no-touch policy with its Asian elephants. Dana Garber agreed with this approach.
“I could’ve died. I don’t want that to happen to someone else’s family,” she told ABC News. “This is going to be with me forever, I will never be able to fully move on from this.”
ABC News’ Jessica Hopper and Laura Coburn contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — The largest police force in the nation is planning to use a fleet of autonomous drones to combat an alarming surge in robberies and assaults in Central Park, the world’s most iconic public green space.
The New York Police Department has already flooded the sprawling park, one of the most popular tourist sites in America, with hundreds of officers patrolling on foot, bike and horseback since violent crime began to skyrocket this summer.
“We’ve got the autonomous drones coming by the end of the month. There are over 800 acres in this park. It’s going to allow us to cover a big territory very quickly and also allow us to get images and video in places where we don’t have cameras,” Tarik Sheppard, the NYPD deputy commissioner for public information, said during a recent news conference in Central Park.
According to the crime statistics through Aug. 18, there have been 33 robberies in Central Park so far in 2024, a 154% increase from this time last year. There have also been 11 felony assaults in the park this year, a 57% increase from 2023.
The jump in Central Park crime comes even as overall violent crime in the city of roughly 8.8 million people is down 2.49% from last year, according to NYPD citywide crime statistics.
‘Most iconic park in the world’
“This is the most iconic park in the world, one of the most iconic locations in the world. There are no secrets being kept here. Crime is up in this park for the year, specifically robberies. Robberies are the name of the game here,” NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said at a news conference last week.
Chell said the robberies were usually occurring between the hours of 7 p.m. and 1 a.m. He said many of the robberies are being committed by juveniles, some as young as 11 years old, who on several occasions have swarmed victims in mobs sometimes as large as a dozen perpetrators.
“In this particular crime pattern, if you will, that’s happening here at the southern end, from 59th to 65th [streets] on both sides of the park involve young groups of kids,” Chell said.
On June 30, two men, ages 20 and 21, were accosted in the park by a group of people who forced them to hand over their backpacks, wallets and headphones, according to police. On Aug. 1, a roving group of bandits surrounded two men sitting on a bench near Wollman Rink near the southern part of the park and robbed them at knifepoint, police said.
On Aug. 13, back-to-back robberies occurred at the southern end of the park. One of the robberies occurred about 10 p.m. when two men were confronted on the west side of the park by two assailants who forcibly snatched their chains, vape pens and one of their hats. The second robbery unfolded three hours later on the east side of the park when victims — ages 35, 21, and 15 — were approached by three teenagers who stole their AirPods and a necklace from one of them, according to police.
Among the assaults that have recently occurred, a 42-year-old man was repeatedly slashed with knives on July 6 at 9:45 a.m. by two strangers he got into an argument with, police said. An 82-year-old woman was accosted on Aug. 14 by a man in his 30s, who pushed her near the Central Park tennis court, causing her to suffer minor injuries, according to police.
11-year-old perpetrator
Chell said police have made several arrests in the crime spree, including one alleged perpetrator just 11 years old.
“The 11-year-old is on video using credit cards stolen from robberies where? In Central Park,” Chell said. “So, this is what we’re combatting.”
Chell said the 11-year-old assailant and several other alleged teenage perpetrators arrested recently are among the migrants who have been pouring into the city.
But not all of the crimes have been the work of roving groups of criminals.
On June 24, a 21-year-old woman sunbathing at 1:30 p.m. in the Great Hill section of the park was attacked by a man who exposed himself and attempted to sexually assault her, police said. The victim managed to fight off the attacker who ran from the scene. A 43-year-old man, whom police identified as Jermaine Longmire, was arrested in the crime and charged with attempted rape and sexual abuse, according to police.
Longmire has pleaded not guilty to the charges and, according to online records, remains locked up at Rikers Island jail.
Chell said the NYPD has a “mandate” to keep park visitors safe.
“We’ll be deploying numerous resources throughout the days, throughout the weeks until we take care of this problem from mounted, to bike patrol, to foot patrol, to cars in the street to drones,” Chell said.