Two Pennsylvania parents face charges of endangering the welfare of a child, including one felony count after they allegedly put their 10-year-old daughter in the dog cage with her pet in the back of their pickup truck, Newsmax reports. The parents were driving home from a family gathering on Memorial Day. Police immediately began receiving reports from drivers who spotted the girl in the cage and were able to get the license plate number. They went to the address where the vehicle was registered but according to reports, the truck was not there but the cops waited for the couple to return home.
"Officer Gapsy and I then set up on the area, and a short time later observed the vehicle turn onto Friday Road from Evergreen Road and a traffic stop was made. Officers could see the open bed of the truck, which had a dog cage with a small dog and a juvenile female in the cage," Officer Brandon Morgan wrote in the criminal complaint.
Abbey Carlson, 29, and Thomas Fishinger, 30 defended their actions by telling police that the girl wanted to be put in the cage so she could calm down their dog who had begun fussing while they were driving.
"I didn't want the dog to suffer," Fishinger told KSBW, a local television station. "That's like animal cruelty to me."
The child's maternal grandmother told KSBW, that the girl did ask to be in the cage and the parents did not think she was in danger because they strapped the cage down with seat belts.
"It was just an innocent mistake on their behalf, and it was nothing more than that," the grandmother said. "Yes, I quite possibly think that she could have been in danger. But I don't think that they were thinking of it that way. They would never put her in danger-never. I know they wouldn't."
