A police officer in Missouri was accused of misdemeanor 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 neighbor 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 neighbor also related what 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 stated. “The deactivation of the AceK9 system directly contributed to the death of K-9 Horus by removing a safeguard to prevent such an incident.”
Zeigler could be fined $2,000 and imprisoned for up to a year. A car’s inside can reach 135 degrees in an hour at 90 degrees outside, according to estimates from the American Veterinary Medical Association.
At the age of two, Horus, a German shepherd of purebreed, enrolled in the department in February 2021, as the agency announced on Facebook at the time. After eight weeks of training, he and his handler began patrolling in May 2021, according to the agency. Commenters have expressed their indignation on the page announcing Horus’s entrance to the department.
“The Savannah Police Department, and the entire community suffered a tremendous loss,” Vincent stated. “K9 Horus passed away after completing an overnight shift on patrol in Savannah.”
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Zeigler will get around a recently enacted legislation that sets harsher punishments for those who kill a police dog because the AG’s office is just prosecuting misdemeanor animal mistreatment.
This year, the Missouri Legislature passed a bill toughening the punishments for harming or killing a police dog. According to the measure, killing a K-9 is now a class D felony, punishable by up to seven years in jail and a $10,000 fine. In July, the bill was signed into law by Governor Mike Parson.
“Under current law, right now, it’s actually a more serious crime to break the window out of a police car, which is admittedly a serious crime,” bill sponsor Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer stated to Missourinet. “That has a stiffer penalty associated with it than killing a law enforcement K9. So, that, to me, just doesn’t seem right.”
