Wheeler Cowperthwaite
Roswell police officers arrested a Hobbs man on a charge of extreme cruelty to animals after he allegedly left his dog in his truck for at least 30-40 minutes as temperatures outside climbed to 97 degrees.
Jonathan Sequeira, 19, was charged with extreme cruelty to animals, after a Roswell police officer found a dog locked in his truck on July 18. He was released on his personal recognizance on July 20, two days after Officer Codi Dilley arrested him.
Extreme cruelty to animals is a fourth-degree felony with a maximum sentence of 18 months in prison. A preliminary examination in the case is set for Aug. 19.
Dilley was initially sent to the UFO Museum parking lot at 4:26 p.m. for a complaint about a dog locked in a truck. When he got there, the dog was barking, with its tongue out and the temperature gauge inside his police car showed 97 degrees, he wrote in a statement of probable cause for Sequeira’s arrest.
One of the UFO Museum employees told Dilley that visitors started complaining about the dog locked in the truck so she started using the public announcement system to find the owner. Bystanders tried to put a tarp over the window and give the dog water through the slight crack, read the report.
The museum employee told Dilley that when she first saw the dog, it was barking and then, it stopped, which worried her. Dispatchers were also unable to call the owner. The truck had temporary plates out of Texas, Dilley wrote.
The officer went across the street to local restaurant El Toro Bravo and asked the servers to ask their patrons if anyone owned the truck, finding Sequiera who said he and his friends came to Roswell to go to the lake and swim. Sequiera told police he had only been inside the restaurant for five minutes. When Dilley asked the server how long they’d been there, she estimated 35 to 40 minutes.
After checking the temperature again, Dilley arrested Sequeira. The officer did not write what the condition of the dog was or what happened to it.
