A police officer in Missouri was accused of misdemeanour animal abuse by prosecutors after he reportedly left his K-9, Horus, in his sweltering cruiser following an overnight shift.
Lt. Daniel Zeigler of the Savannah Police Department was charged by the Missouri Attorney General’s Office on Friday, according to documents. According to a probable cause arrest affidavit, Zeigler and Horus ended their overnight shift on June 20 just before five in the morning. Just before 6 p.m., Zeigler called Savannah police chief David Vincent to inform him that Horus had passed away from heat exposure, according to the authorities. The prosecution stated that the day’s high temperature was 88 degrees.
That evening, a neighbour reported to the police that he heard Zeigler “flipping out” and screamed in “disbelief” that he “thought he had brought the K-9 in at the end of his shift” after seeing Horus’ body outside the cruiser. The neighbour also related that she overheard Zeigler admit to being Horus’s killer when they were speaking with Vincent at the funeral.
An AceK9 system was installed on Zeigler’s cruiser. When the internal temperature of the car hits ninety degrees, it is supposed to turn on the fan, roll down the windows, and sound the siren several times. According to the affidavit, Missouri State Police troopers tested the device about a week after the event and found it to be functional.
“This test demonstrated the AceK9 system inside the Savannah Police K-9 vehicle was in working order and would have had to been manually turned off/deactivated on June 20, 2024,” prosecutors wrote. “The deactivation of the AceK9 system directly contributed to the death of K-9 Horus by removing a safeguard to prevent such an incident.”
