{"id":8609,"date":"2025-10-17T18:05:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T18:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/8609\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T18:05:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T18:05:09","slug":"florida-prosecutors-drop-criminal-case-in-trooper-dog-saga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/8609\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida prosecutors drop criminal case in ‘Trooper’ dog saga"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tampa-area prosecutor\u2019s office is defending its controversial and unexpected decision to drop a felony criminal case against the man accused of tying his bull terrier dog<\/a> to a fence in rising waters and abandoning it along Interstate 75<\/a> amid an evacuation ahead of a major hurricane.<\/p>\n

The Hillsborough State Attorney\u2019s Office, led by Suzy Lopez, said it lacked witnesses and sufficient evidence to win a conviction on a felony aggravated animal cruelty charge in a trial. The case involved \u201cTrooper,\u201d the dog renamed after the Florida Highway Patrol officer who rescued him<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile this case stirs many emotions and even ethical questions, we do not have a good-faith basis to continue this prosecution,\u201d the state attorney\u2019s office said.<\/p>\n

The prosecutor\u2019s office filed paperwork Wednesday to drop its case against Giovanny Aldama Garcia, 24, of Ruskin, Florida. Aldama Garcia had told an investigator he had been trying for months to get rid of the dog, which he had named Jumbo, and left the dog on the side of I-75 as he and his mother evacuated Florida\u2019s west coast ahead of Hurricane Milton, court records said.<\/p>\n

The case made national news. Gov. Ron DeSantis called the dog\u2019s treatment \u201cunacceptable\u201d and said the state would hold the dog\u2019s owner accountable. Lopez, the state prosecutor, chimed in, too, and said she couldn\u2019t fathom tying a pet to a fence in such conditions.<\/p>\n

In a new one-page memorandum circulated Friday, Lopez\u2019s office said that during trial preparations it became clear there weren\u2019t witnesses or evidence to prove that Aldama Garcia had tied the dog to the fence in rising waters.<\/p>\n

The memo said video from the highway patrol showed the dog\u2019s collar was stuck on the fence, and a witness earlier had seen the dog loose near the interstate. It said Aldama Garcia and his mother said the dog was becoming stressed and aggressive during their drive and the dog jumped from the car when they stopped to deal with the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe facts as depicted in the video and the statements do not support the theory that the dog was attached to the fence in an intentional manner,\u201d the memo said. It added: \u201cA failure to locate the dog during an emergency evacuation does not equate to a criminal failure to act.\u201d<\/p>\n

A legal expert on animal cruelty laws and co-creator of Florida\u2019s Animal Cruelty Taskforce, Adam Stern, said prosecutors would have needed to prove that Aldama Garcia caused the dog either death or injury \u2013 which include physical trauma or neglect.<\/p>\n

He said in some cases, aggravated animal cruelty charges can be hard to prove without tangible, physical evidence. No case is ever as straightforward as it seems, he said.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The abandoned dog, now renamed Trooper, became famous on social media after being seen tied to a fence as Hurricane Milton approached. He is seen here playing with his new foster at his temporary home.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s always going to be a monkey wrench that something comes up, that there’s a new piece of evidence or there is a small piece that’s missing,\u201d he said. \u201cIn some cases, there’s evidence to exonerate somebody because they didn’t do it and it was somebody else, or it was an accident.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stern has been involved as a legal expert in thousands of animal cruelty cases, including ones where animals have been tethered to dog houses with rising flood waters then drowned.<\/p>\n

By law, that would be aggravated animal cruelty, he said. The case in Tampa was different, according to the new prosecutor\u2019s memo, which said there was no evidence that Trooper was deliberately tied to a fence.<\/p>\n

The highway patrol video of the dog\u2019s rescue went viral. The officer wrote in his arrest warrant that he was responding to a 911 call that a dog had been abandoned and tied to a post. The dog can be seen in water levels up to his chest, trembling and shaking. Investigators later interviewed Aldama Garcia after he showed up at an animal shelter to recover the dog.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe defendant stated he observed the dog in standing water in heavy rain during a hurricane evacuation and left him behind,\u201d the trooper wrote in the arrest report.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The abandoned dog, now renamed Trooper, became famous on social media after being seen tied to a fence as Hurricane Milton approached. He is seen here playing with his new foster at his temporary home.<\/p>\n

A press release from the prosecutor\u2019s office in October 2024 announcing the criminal case against Aldama Garcia also had described the dog as \u201ctied up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, asked Friday under Florida\u2019s public records law for a copy of the trooper\u2019s body cam video and any recorded interview between investigators and Aldama Garcia. The prosecutor\u2019s office said it would cost $686 to review and turn over.<\/p>\n

Trooper\u2019s new owner, Frank Spina of Parkland in South Florida, said Lopez called him to personally deliver the news of the dropped case earlier this week. He said she cited a language barrier between Aldama Garcia and investigating officers along with a lack of evidence as reasoning.<\/p>\n

Spina said that just two months ago, the state attorney\u2019s office considered this their most important case, only to drop it at a whim.\u00a0\u201cYou\u2019re going to have a tough time when you’ve got to talk to Ron (DeSantis) and Casey (DeSantis) and say you’re ditching this case,\u201d he said in an interview Thursday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my opinion, this was a high-profile case that everybody was watching,\u201d he said. \u201cThey were afraid to lose it on TV.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at kairilowery@ufl.edu<\/a>. <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Prosecutor defends dropping ‘Trooper’ cruelty case<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tampa-area prosecutor\u2019s office is defending its controversial and unexpected decision to drop a felony criminal case against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8796,353,8798,1827,28,30,618,29,8797,412,8799],"class_list":{"0":"post-8609","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-aldama-garcia","9":"tag-animal-cruelty","10":"tag-criminal-case","11":"tag-dog","12":"tag-florida","13":"tag-florida-headlines","14":"tag-florida-highway-patrol","15":"tag-florida-news","16":"tag-prosecutors-office","17":"tag-ron-desantis","18":"tag-suzy-lopez"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}