A car thief in Pasadena, Calif., didn’t just steal a vehicle last week. He also stole Kazoo, a dog that happened to be inside the car when the crime occurred.
Fortunately for Kazoo, he was wearing a GPS tracker [affiliate link] on his collar that allowed Pasadena and Los Angeles police officers to locate him along with the thief near the Los Angeles International Airport, about 30 miles from Pasadena.
The car/dog thief was arrested and taken into custody — not only for stealing that particular vehicle, but also for another stolen vehicle he had left behind that day in Pasadena. Cool dude!
Kazoo was unharmed and returned to his owner.
“This is the story of how Kazoo the dog helped us arrest a car thief,” the Pasadena Police Department wrote on its Instagram.
The main selling point of GPS collars is that their global positioning satellite technology can help you locate your pet should they ever escape from your home or otherwise become lost. As Kazoo’s case shows, they can also prove to be very helpful in nabbing criminals!
Stopping for lunch near Houston on their way home from a road trip last weekend, Andrew Mathias and his family tied their 4-year-old Golden Retriever, Lucy, to a tree in the restaurant’s parking lot. They assumed she’d be safe and cool in this shady spot.
They were sadly mistaken. When they left the restaurant, Lucy was gone. A surveillance camera captured footage of a woman untying Lucy, taking her to a truck and then driving away.
After viewing the footage, Matt Dougherty, a reporter with CBS affiliate station KHOU in Houston, decided to do his best to find Lucy.
Fortunately, the truck’s license plate was visible in the footage. Dougherty was able to get the truck owner’s address and, accompanied by a KHOU news crew, went to her home in New Caney, Texas.
There were a lot of dogs on the property. When Dougherty asked the man who answered the door if there was a woman there “who collects dogs,” the man said she was his cousin.
Dougherty and the news crew took Lucy and contacted authorities. The reporter also made a FaceTime video phone call to Mathias.
“Well, I don’t want to bury the lead — I’ll go ahead and let you know,” Dougherty told him. “We’ve got somebody in the back seat with us.” Mathias and his family were thrilled when they saw it was Lucy.
Later, as Polk County Pct. 2 Constable Bill Cunningham watched, Lucy was reunited with her overjoyed family.
Mathias told KHOU he’ll never leave Lucy unattended in public again.
Perhaps the dognapper’s heart was in the right place: She thought Lucy had been abandoned outside the restaurant, her two children who were inside the truck at the time told KHOU in a follow-up story.
Lucy “was looking confused,” a 13-year-old boy told KHOU. There was “a lot of saliva coming out of her mouth, so we thought oh, she’s super thirsty.” (The Mathias family said they had left a bowl filled with water next to their dog.)
The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the case. The woman and her children hope the Mathias family will forgive them. “We’re so sorry if you guys thought that we stole it,” the boy told KHOU. “We didn’t do it for bad intentions. We did it for a good cause, because we thought it was abandoned.”
Here’s some advice for this woman and anyone else who sees a dog in a similar situation: It’s a good idea to check inside the restaurant first to see if the owner is there before taking any action.
When a dog breeder and buyer met in the parking lot of a San Bernardino, Calif., supermarket earlier this month, the sale of a puppy didn’t go at all as the breeder had planned.
“The alleged buyer took the puppy, pushed the breeder and ran,” San Bernardino police Lt. Mike Madden told the Sun.
After the breeder contacted the police, two detectives were able to track down the puppynapper in the High Desert. According to a Facebook post, the thief was in the process of reselling the puppy when the detectives intervened.
The detectives rescued the stolen puppy, who appears to be a Pit Bull, and, as you can see in these photos, drove him back to the breeder.
The Sun reports that the puppynapper has not yet been charged with any crime, which seems odd. The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office is currently reviewing the robbery case.
With so many stories of cops shooting dogs for no reason, it’s reassuring to know there are compassionate people in law enforcement who do the right thing and truly care about animals.
However…are Pit Bull breeders doing the right thing by raising and selling these dogs? With so many Pit Bulls in animal shelters, in my opinion, the answer is no.
If you’re thinking about getting a Pit Bull or any other breed of dog, please consider adopting one from a shelter or rescue instead of buying one from a breeder. In my own experience with dogs from breeders and shelters, it really doesn’t matter which they came from. And by adopting a shelter or rescue pet, remember that you’re potentially saving two lives: that of your new family member as well as the dog who will now be able to take his place in the shelter — and hopefully be just as lucky.
Fannie, a little Poodle mix stolen last month by two women posing as LAPD Animal Cruelty Task Force (ACTF) officers, was reunited today with her dog dad, Caesar Aguilar. One of the dognappers was arrested and is facing three felony counts.
The women, wearing green uniforms, showed up on Aguilar’s doorstep in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles April 14. They told him they were with ACTF and had received multiple complaints that Fannie was being neglected. The women handed Aguilar an official ACTF flyer, and demanded to confiscate Fannie so she could be examined for signs of neglect or abuse.
Aguilar did as they asked, and they drove off with his dog. When he called the phone number on the flyer, the ACTF answered, but told him the department had no record of complaints about Fannie or knowledge of the confiscation.
Lt. Ryan Rabbett of the LAPD Rampart Division told KTLA today that news reports and social media helped lead to the arrest of Jenny Smiles, one of the suspects.
“A citizen said she’d overheard the suspects bragging about how they’d posed as officers and retrieved this dog from a location in Echo Park,” Rabbett said.
Smiles has been charged with extortion, theft by trickery and impersonating an officer. The other woman remains at large, Rabbett told KTLA. Police are concerned that the women may have stolen other dogs as well.
Anyone with information is asked to call LAPD’s Rampart Area Burglary Detectives at 213-484-3400 or 877-527-3247. To leave an anonymous tip, call Crime Stoppers at 800-222-8477.
No matter where you live, if someone comes to your door claiming to be an officer, the LAPD advises that you ask for identification, and examine it closely to see if it is official. If you’re still suspicious, ask for additional proof. And if you suspect someone is impersonating an officer, call 911 immediately.
Two women wearing green uniforms showed up on the doorstep of Caesar Aguilar in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles April 14, telling him they were with the LAPD Animal Cruelty Task Force (ACTF). They said the ACTF had received multiple complaints that his dog, Fannie, was being neglected. They handed him an official ACTF flyer and demanded to confiscate Fannie so she could be examined for signs of neglect or abuse.
Aguilar did as they asked, and the women drove off with his dog.
Knowing he had not been neglecting Frannie, a small, white dog who appears to be a Maltese mix, Aguilar called the number on the flyer. The ACTF answered, but told him the department had no record of complaints or knowledge of the confiscation.
An LAPD news release describes the suspects as an Hispanic woman and a white woman. Both appeared to be in their mid-30s, about 5 feet tall and weighing about 140 pounds.
The ACTF is concerned that other pet parents may be victims of this scam.
Scott Stephen, a neighbor of Aguilar, seems to feel the same way I do: Good luck taking our dogs away from us.
“I love this dog to death, so I probably couldn’t be separated even with physical force,” he told CBS Los Angeles. “But that’s certainly a challenge, especially when someone looks like an authority figure.”
If someone comes to your door claiming to be an officer, the LAPD advises that you ask for identification, and examine it closely to see if it is official. If you’re still suspicious, ask for additional proof. And if you suspect someone is impersonating an officer, call 911 immediately.
Anyone with information about the dog thieves is asked to call LAPD’s Rampart Area Burglary Detectives at 213-484-3400 or 877-527-3247. To leave an anonymous tip, call Crime Stoppers at 800-222-8477.
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