TAMPA, Fla. — Actor Dave Bautista is adding his support to a west-central Florida animal rescue organization to find information leading to the arrest of someone who threw three puppies from a vehicle on Wednesday.
Bautista, 55, a former professional wrestler who is appearing in the upcoming “Dune: Part 2″ film, posted on the Humane Society of Tampa Bay’s Instagram account on Friday, pledging $5,000 in addition to the organization’s already posted reward of $10,000.,
“Someone heartless and cruel tossed three 8-week-old pointer/hound mixes out the window of a moving vehicle and left them there to suffer and die,” the Humane Society of Tampa Bay posted. “This disregard for the life of vulnerable beings is not acceptable and is, in fact, illegal. Violence against animals is almost always linked to violence against humans and is a detriment to the safety of this community.”
All three of the puppies survived the impact after being thrown onto a road in north Tampa, one of them was hit by a different vehicle and died, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
A person who lived in the area found the dogs and called the Humane Society’s rescue team, according to the newspaper. The surviving dogs suffered broken bones.
“This makes me sick to my stomach,” Bautista wrote in an answer to the original Instagram post. “And when it happens in my own community, I can’t help but take it personally. I’d love to contribute another $5000 to this reward.”
Baustist offered a $5,000 reward for information on a person who abused the puppy he adopted from the Humane Society in 2021, the Times reported.
Kyla Faison, who found the dogs, told WTVT that she heard “a screeching sound.”
“If we didn’t hear it, we probably would not have known that it happened,” Faison told the television station. And all of a sudden, we hear this screeching sound, like the tires of a car just screeching. And then we hear yelping.”
Faison said that seeing the puppies suffering on the ground was heart-wrenching. One of the dogs had a tire mark on its abdomen.
“To hear them truly in pain, it was so, it was so heartbreaking,” she told WTVT. “So as soon as we heard that there was a sound, we came out. And once we saw the puppies, I fought tears.”
The surviving puppies have been named Luke and Leia, the Times reported. They will need more medical attention, according to the newspaper.
Regan Blessinger of the Humane Society of Tampa Bay said that more dogs are being dumped, noting that some people are having difficulty caring for their pets.
But she added that what happened to the three puppies was inexcusable.
“A lot of times, people either aren’t caught, or when they are, it is a minimal fine or something like that,” Blessinger told WTVT. “They absolutely need to be held a lot more accountable.”
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