As David Fredman drove to work Monday morning along busy Interstate 70 in Independence, Mo., he was shocked by what he saw beside an overpass.
A dog had been tied with an electrical cord to a power box. His feet barely reached the ground as he struggled to free himself from the cord digging into his neck.
Fredman immediately pulled over, called 911 and used a knife to cut the dog free. “The way I found him, I just couldn’t believe somebody would do that to an animal at all,” he told WDAF.
“As soon as I cut him down, he couldn’t breathe. He was trying to breathe,” Fredman said. “I tried get him to walk. He couldn’t walk.”
Fredman rushed the dog to KC Pet Project, a nonprofit animal shelter in Kansas City, Mo.
It turned out that the dog was microchipped. His name is Max and he’s 16 years old. He had escaped from his yard earlier that morning and his owner, Dee Vaughn, had been looking for him for hours.
There was no way Max, who has difficulty walking, could have made it all the way to the I-70 a mile away on his own, Vaughn said. It’s unclear yet whether someone intentionally tried to hang Max or just made a very bad decision to tie him to the power box. Surveillance cameras may be able to reveal what happened.
Vaughn, like Fredman, was shocked when he saw a photo of Max hanging from the power box. “Literally you could see the imprint around his neck where they hung him,” he told WDAF.
Max is now safely back at home and, after this ordeal, will probably never want to wander off again. Vaughn is grateful that Fredman went above and beyond to rescue him.
“Thank you, David, so much,” Vaughn told him, according to WDAF. “You stopped what you were doing to turn around and save my dog’s life.”
Photo: CBS 17/YouTube