Another authorities dog has actually died this month after being left inside an officer’s hot police car, authorities said. The K-9, called Aron, was 4 years of ages and had actually worked for a year and a half with the Houston Police Department.
“On June 12, 2023, we lost a member of our K-9 family in an awful mishap,” the department said in a statement. “Houston Police Department K-9 Aron, 4 years of age with 1.5 years of authorities service at the department, died from heat fatigue.”
The K-9’s handler found the dog “in distress” Monday inside the police car, which must have been keeping up the cooling system turned on as long as the animal stayed there. Leaving a cops dog in its handler’s vehicle “is an essential and typical practice when the K-9 partner is not actively taken part in authorities work,” authorities said Houston Police. But, when Aron’s handler went back to the car, they found that the engine had actually turned off in their lack, triggering the cooling to close down too.
Normally, patrol cars where K-9 dogs are kept have a backup system for emergency scenarios like this one. The system “notifies the handler, sounds the horn, activates cooling fans, and rolls down the car windows, if for some reason the vehicle shuts down,” according to Houston Police, which noted that in this instance, the backup mechanisms malfunctioned too. Although police transported Aron to a veterinary clinic after finding the dog in distress, the animal died from heat exhaustion.
The Houston Police Department said it is investigating the incident to determine how and why the patrol car’s engine suddenly switched off without triggering the emergency cooling system, and to prevent a similar incident from happening again in the future. All patrol cars that transport K-9 dogs for Houston Police will be inspected by the vendor for potential problems.
“Please keep Aron’s handler and the entire K-9 team in your prayers as they mourn the loss of Aron,” Houston Police said.
Aron’s death from heat exhaustion marked the second time in the span of a week that a police K-9 dog died from heat-related injuries, after being left in a patrol car.
On June 5, a K-9 named Chase, assigned to the Cobb County Police Department in Georgia, was found unresponsive inside its handler’s vehicle when the car shut off without triggering the emergency cooling system. The dog was later declared dead from “heat-related injuries,” the Cobb County Police Department said.
Investigators found that the patrol vehicle “had actually multiple failures” that caused the K-9’s death, which Cobb County authorities called “a horrible occurrence.”
