LADY LAKE, Fla. (CBS12) — “It’s pretty hot in the car. It’s a puppy.”
That’s what a Lady Lake police officer is heard saying on body camera video moments before rescuing an overheated dog from a locked vehicle in a shopping center parking lot.
Officers said they responded around 2:25 p.m., May 16, to a Five Below along U.S. Highway 27/441 after a caller reported a puppy left inside a car with the windows barely cracked. Outside temperatures topped 92 degrees.
When officers Jeffrey Burns and Michael Tisdell arrived, they found the black puppy panting heavily and in distress. One officer noted the dog was “pretty warm,” adding, “ears are cooking,” as they worked to get the car open.
After unlocking the door with a kit, officers pulled the puppy out of the sweltering vehicle.
“Come on, come on,” one officer can be heard saying as the dog is lifted out.
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The puppy was placed in an air-conditioned patrol car and given water. “You think she’s thirsty?” an officer asks in the video as the dog quickly drinks and begins to recover.
Police believe the puppy had been inside for at least 40 minutes.
The owner, identified as 26-year-old Yeneese Morejon, was taken into custody at the scene. Body camera video shows an officer telling her, “I’m going to arrest you for animal cruelty,” while another asks if she would:
Want to sit in that hot car for as long as that dog was.”
Morejon told officers she had only been inside briefly and said the store line was long. She was transported to the Lake County Jail.
Police Chief Steve Hunt credited both the responding officers and the person who called 911.
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Officials say the case is a reminder of how quickly temperatures inside a parked car can become dangerous. Even with windows cracked, conditions can turn deadly within minutes in Florida’s heat.