Three dogs were found dead<\/a> inside a vehicle Monday in a downtown San Antonio parking lot. Investigators believe the dogs likely died from heat exposure, though the case remains under investigation and no charges have been filed.<\/p>\nWhat charges a person could face for leaving a pet in a hot vehicle<\/p>\n
Bethany Snowden, captain and ACS interim assistant director, explained how these cases are classified.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese kind of cases, it\u2019s considered a cruel confinement case. Also, does the animal have access to water, shelter, shade? So those are different things that we look into when we\u2019re investigating essentially animals and vehicles,\u201d Snowden said.<\/p>\n
A cruel confinement case can range from a Class C misdemeanor up to a Class A misdemeanor \u2014 or higher. A Class A misdemeanor carries a penalty of up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $4,000.<\/p>\n
If you spot a pet in distress inside a hot vehicle, ACS urges you to call 311 and alert animal control immediately. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese are our hottest months of the year, and any animal that\u2019s contained in a vehicle, even with the windows cracked, that doesn\u2019t do anything,\u201d Snowden said. <\/p>\n
ACS also recommends leaving pets at home whenever possible \u2014 in a cool space with access to water.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur pets don\u2019t need to go everywhere with us,\u201d Snowden said. \u201cIf you want to take them outside, then just making sure that you keep responsibility for everything that you have on you, and that way there\u2019s no duress that happens to any of these animals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 San Antonio\u2019s Animal Care Services (ACS) responds frequently to cases involving pets left in hot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[31199,82,84,83],"class_list":["post-383751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-acs","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}