An Augusta man was charged with aggravated cruelty to animals after passersby reported seeing a dead dog, and another dog panting heavily, in his pickup truck parked outside a restaurant and bar where the man spent his afternoon, according to court records.
Augusta police allege Abinadi Nephi White, 34, left his two rottweilers in his truck for about five hours on the afternoon of Aug. 8, resulting in the death of one of the dogs, which he said were his service animals.
A woman told police White had been at the Whiskey Kitchen since about 12:30 p.m. that day. She said she went outside the bar and restaurant at around 5:20 p.m. and saw a truck parked on Commercial Street. She said she looked into the truck and saw that one of two dogs in the Ford F-150 appeared to deceased, because it was not moving.
She called police and officers responded. According to an affidavit filed in court by officer Sara Rogers, Rogers looked into the truck and saw a large dog on the passenger floorboard of the truck that was not moving or breathing, and another dog in the passenger compartment that was panting heavily.
An officer went into the Whiskey Kitchen to get White, according to the affidavit, and White initially stated his dogs were fine and that he’d been coming out to check on them, including a visit 45 minutes before police arrived.
White opened the truck and one dog came out, and White “was still in denial” the other dog was deceased, Rogers wrote in the affidavit. She said the dog was stiff and there was fluid coming from his nose when White moved its head. The affidavit said White realized the dog was deceased and began to cry and was emotional.
Rogers said the other dog that came out of the vehicle appeared to be extremely dehydrated. White had a small amount of water remaining in a jug in the truck that he poured into a bowl for the surviving dog. A resident of a nearby apartment gave the group two 12-ounce containers of water, which were put into the bowl. The dog quickly drank the water and, later at the humane society, police said the dog also quickly drank another bowl of water. Rogers said there was a water bowl on the backseat of the truck and it was dry.
Rogers said the windows of White’s truck were cracked slightly but the truck was not running. When she put her hand into White’s pickup truck she said it was very warm inside. Another Augusta officer said that at 5:57 p.m. that evening, the temperature in his cruiser was 81 degrees inside the vehicle.
White told police the dogs were fine when he’d checked on them 45 minutes prior to the police arriving. And that the dogs were used to being in the heat because they had lived in Texas and Kentucky. Police said White appeared to be highly intoxicated and unsteady on his feet, according to the affidavit.
A witness said she started serving White at the Whiskey Kitchen at 12:30 p.m. and that he mentioned having two dogs. She said she never saw him go out to his vehicle, though she went on break around 3 p.m.
Another witness who arrived around 4 p.m. said he saw only one dog in White’s vehicle. He later went outside, after the other witness reported seeing a dead dog in the truck, looked inside and saw what appeared to be a deceased dog inside, according to the affidavit.
White was arrested and charged with aggravated cruelty to animals, a Class C felony offense punishable by up to five years in prison.
On Sept. 17, White was indicted by a Kennebec County grand jury on one count of aggravated cruelty to animals and three counts of cruelty to animals, all related to the same incident. The three counts of cruelty to animals are misdemeanor charges punishable by less than a year in prison.
The cruelty to animals charges were cited as criminal violations. Such charges can also be, in some cases, civil charges. Earlier this month Brodie Hinckley, the director of Maine’s Bureau of Emergency Communications, was charged with a civil violation of animal cruelty after he allegedly left Baxter, a 3-year-old chocolate Labrador, in a state vehicle outside the Bangor Regional Communications Center on a hot day. The dog, the state’s first “comfort dog” and assigned to comfort dispatchers in the state Bureau of Emergency Communications, died after being left in the car for more than four hours after the vehicle’s battery was depleted.
An indictment by the grand jury is not a finding of guilt but indicates enough evidence exists for a case to move forward toward trial.
