A man was caught on surveillance video throwing a bag that contained a dog with a rope around its neck into a dumpster last Thursday in southwest Florida, local police said Monday.
Anthony Bellman was the suspect in the surveillance video that the Lee County Sheriff’s Office aired at a press conference, according to Sheriff Carmine Marceno. The suspect could be seen in the video tossing into the dumpster a black bag he had picked up from the trunk of his SUV and then driving off. The incident occurred at Lehigh Acres, Marceno said at the press conference.
Employees of a Family Dollar store noticed movements in the black trash bag in the dumpster and found the sixteen-year-old Shih Tzu named Xyla, with a rope around her neck, Marceno said. The employees rushed Xyla to an animal hospital and reported to the police. Lee County’s Animal Cruelty Task Force detectives noted that Xyla was microchipped and her original owners had passed away.
Within two hours and using “the latest and greatest technology,” they eventually found the same SUV Bellman had allegedly driven at a nearby residence, in which they then found Bellman in the same clothes the suspect in the surveillance video was wearing, Marceno said. Bellman, a relative of Xyla’s original owners, had told his family that he was taking Xyla to The Humane Society to have it euthanized, Marceno added.
Bellman faces a felony charge of aggravated animal cruelty and will be registered as an animal abuser “when convicted,” Marceno said. (RELATED: Video Shows Woman Throw Dog Off Parking Garage, Leave It For Dead)
“No living thing deserves to be discarded like common trash. The suspect literally throwing a life away,” Marceno said.
Bellman was shown in a police video aired at the press conference handcuffed hand and foot and led away into a police van.
“Instead of landing in a dumpster where he belongs, Bellman landed in jail,” Moreno said.
The partially blind Xyla, meanwhile, responded well to treatment and people have offered to adopt her, Marceno said.