Pittsburgh International Airport<\/a>, where officers found a chocolate Labrador retriever puppy running loose along the departures curb, according to a criminal complaint. <\/p>\nInvestigators identified the owner as Omar Orlando Perez, 42, of Robstown, Texas, just outside of Corpus Christi. <\/p>\n
Police said Perez initially claimed an Uber driver abandoned the dog, but later admitted the puppy was his. <\/p>\n
Security camera video reviewed by investigators shows Perez letting the puppy out of a vehicle at the curb before unloading his luggage. <\/p>\n
The dog stayed close to him, circling around as he gathered his belongings, according to the complaint. <\/p>\n
As Perez walked toward the terminal, the puppy repeatedly tried to follow him inside. The complaint states Perez chased the dog away from the sliding doors multiple times. <\/p>\n
Police said Perez then came back outside and again forced the puppy away, this time toward an active roadway where vehicles were dropping off passengers, before walking back into the terminal and leaving the dog behind. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe puppy made several attempts to follow Perez into the building,\u201d investigators wrote in the complaint. <\/p>\n
Perez told officers he had been traveling across the country with the puppy while working as a truck driver but had recently lost his job and could not afford to bring the dog on his flight back to Texas. <\/p>\n
The puppy had been with him since he got the dog as a Christmas gift and he had been caring for it, according to the complaint. <\/p>\n
The Allegheny County Police Department said the puppy is doing well and will be placed in foster care.<\/p>\n
Perez is charged with two counts of animal cruelty and one count of animal abandonment, according to court records. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 27. <\/p>\n
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Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH \u2013 A Texas man is facing criminal charges after police in Pennsylvania say he abandoned his puppy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[11280,67505,5527,67503,31,784,2662,5000,182,28,30,29,73,6846,11337,67504,8345],"class_list":["post-148119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-animal","tag-chocolate-lab","tag-christmas","tag-corpus-christi","tag-crime","tag-criminal","tag-dog","tag-houston","tag-local-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-international-airport","tag-puppy","tag-robstown","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148119","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=148119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}