Police Dog Left In Cruiser Overnight Found Dead

Police K-9 Kela, a Belgian Malinois, tragically died after a North Carolina sheriff’s deputy left the dog in his patrol car overnight.

Deputy Kevin Williams, the dog’s handler, apparently was distracted by his sick child and forgot that Kela was still in his hot cruiser.

Duplin County Sheriff Blake Wallace told WITN what happened to the K-9 in the incident last month that just became public.

“Williams was on duty when he received a call that his child was sick and needed to be picked up from school. Wallace says once arriving home, the deputy took his child inside and then went back out to feed the dog. The sheriff says Williams forgot to take ‘Kela’ out of the cruiser and the dog was found dead the next morning.”

Calling it a tragic accident, the sheriff described Williams as devastated about the death of his K-9 partner of four years Kela, whom he loved. The deputy has been reassigned to courthouse security duties. For the time being, no charges will be brought against him for animal cruelty based on the absence of criminal intent. Kela was trained in both narcotics detection and human tracking.

One local resident told the ABC News affiliate, “I just think it’s crazy, because they get on everyone else for leaving their animals in the car and dying, and they want to throw them in jail, but they can’t do nothing about their own officer that kills one of their K9s.”

In a different finding, a Wyoming cop has been charged with misdemeanor animal cruelty after he locked a narcotics-sniffing dog in a hot squad car for five hours outside the police department. The Labrador died of heat stroke.

In June 2013, another Belgian Malinois police dog in Georgia was found dead of heat stroke after being left in his handler’s patrol car. A police dog accidentally left in a cruiser overnight in May 2013 died of a heart attack or heat exhaustion in Mississippi.

As has been extensively and sadly chronicled, there have also been a slew of young children abandoned by their parents in hot cars this summer.

Police dogs are an integral part of law enforcement and typically form a strong bond with their human officer handlers. As The Inquisitr previously reported, for example, more than 1,000 people attended the funeral of Kye, a three-year-old Belgian German shepherd K-9 in the Oklahoma City police department who was killed in the line of duty in August; the pup was laid to rest in a ceremony with full police honors.

Watch a local news report about the death of Kela the police dog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQSpvssNxVM