{"id":144779,"date":"2026-03-21T17:21:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T17:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/144779\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T17:21:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T17:21:14","slug":"man-faces-cruelty-charge-after-abandoning-puppy-at-pittsburgh-international-airport-police-say-wpxi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/144779\/","title":{"rendered":"Man faces cruelty charge after abandoning puppy at Pittsburgh International Airport, police say \u2013 WPXI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">PITTSBURGH \u2014 A man is facing charges after police say he tried to leave behind a puppy at the Pittsburgh International Airport. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">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=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">After safely securing the dog, a Labrador puppy, investigators made contact with Omar Perez, 42, of Texas. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">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 class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">According to ACPD, Perez now faces multiple charges, including animal cruelty and animal abandonment. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">The puppy is reportedly doing well and was placed in a foster home. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Download the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpxi.com\/mobile-apps\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FREE WPXI News app<\/a> for breaking news alerts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Follow Channel 11 News on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/wpxi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WPXI\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>. | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpxi.com\/video\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Watch WPXI NOW<\/a><\/p>\n<p>TOP STORIES FROM CHANNEL 11 NEWS <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph body-copyright\">\u00a92026 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH \u2014 A man is facing charges after police say he tried to leave behind a puppy at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[33018,30642,66098,40706,37370,24624,694,2662,66099,17913,73,75,6846,74,11337],"class_list":["post-144779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-abandoned","tag-abandoned-dog","tag-abandoned-puppy","tag-acpd","tag-allegheny-county-police-department","tag-animal-abandonment","tag-animal-cruelty","tag-dog","tag-labrador","tag-pit","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-international-airport","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-puppy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144779","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=144779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}