{"id":144672,"date":"2026-03-21T13:07:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T13:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/144672\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T13:07:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T13:07:07","slug":"man-faces-cruelty-charge-after-abandoning-puppy-at-pittsburgh-international-airport-police-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/144672\/","title":{"rendered":"Man faces cruelty charge after abandoning puppy at Pittsburgh International Airport, police say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/d10213e5c81f029145b402c33cde4a09.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">A man is facing charges after police say he tried to leave behind a puppy at the Pittsburgh International Airport.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Allegheny County Police Department said officers at the airport were notified of an abandoned dog running loose at the depatures curb around 5 p.m. Friday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">After safely securing the dog, a Labrador puppy, investigators made contact with Omar Perez, 42, of Texas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">ACPD said that Perez initially told investigators he watched an Uber driver drop off the dog, but eventually admitted to abandoning the puppy when he realized he would be unable to fly with it.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">According to ACPD, Perez now faces multiple charges, including animal cruelty and animal abandonment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The puppy is reportedly doing well and was placed in a foster home.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Download the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpxi.com\/mobile-apps\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:FREE WPXI News app;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;FREE WPXI News app&quot;}\" class=\"link \">FREE WPXI News app<\/a> for breaking news alerts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Follow Channel 11 News on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/wpxi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Facebook;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Facebook&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Facebook<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WPXI\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" 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Pittsburgh&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[40706,694,2662,66074,66075,73,75,74],"class_list":["post-144672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-acpd","tag-animal-cruelty","tag-dog","tag-labrador-puppy","tag-omar-perez","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}