Charges Dropped Against Hero Veteran Who Saved Dog From Car

The hero war veteran who broke a car window to save a suffocating dog will not be facing charges after all. This comes as great news to the thousands of people who have spoken out against his arrest, since he was doing nothing more than saving a life that was carelessly left to suffer in a hot, sealed-up vehicle. Fox News 23 reports that Michael Hammons, a 46-year-old Desert Storm veteran, has escaped charges after a car dealership offered to pay for damages caused by the man during the rescue.

Michael’s heroic actions went viral earlier this month when news broke that he had been criminally charged after he broke a car window to save a small dog. The war veteran happened upon the Yorkie breed pup, which was panting and hot in the locked car. The owner of the car was nowhere in sight, so the man used his part of his wife’s wheelchair to break the car window to rescue the little dog.

The Week reports that Georgia law would have protected the man’s actions had he broken into the car to save a human’s life instead of a dog’s. Instead, the owner of the car was able to retaliate and press charges against him for breaking her car window — even though she was the one who chose to lock the small dog in the hot vehicle, which is also against the law. The car owner was cited for leaving the dog in her car, but she claims she was only gone for five minutes by the time Michael Hammons broke the window. She pressed charges in retaliation, but after a car dealership in Georgia offered to pay for the damage, she has decided to drop those charges.

Before these charges were dropped, this case served as a sort of discouragement against saving suffering animals in trapped vehicles. Numerous people were so outraged that petitions began to circulate which demanded that charges against him be dropped. One petition had reached nearly all of the 26,000 required signatures before the charges were dropped. This wasn’t a directly attributed success, but pet lovers and animal safety advocates can rejoice in knowing that this man is not going to be punished for being a small dog’s hero.

The inside of a car with the windows rolled up can reach temperatures that nearly double the outside temperature. That means that even on a 60 degree day, a dog or child is at risk if left inside of a sealed car. Knowing these facts, would you risk breaking someone’s car window to rescue a dog?

[Photo: Twitter/dog rescued by Michael Hammons]