A decomposing dog was found in the AC truck normally driven by Tim Garza, the sole ACO for the city of Arvin, CA. Mr. Garza had been arrested 10 days earlier and remained in jail at the time of the discovery:
Tim Garza is accused of beating his girlfriend of two years at her home off California Avenue in Bakersfield. Court documents say Garza left the woman with several bruises, held a gun to her head, and forced her to record a cell phone video saying a head butt that caused a gash on her head was an accident.
Garza is also accused of raping the woman in October in front of his two children.
He has been charged with multiple felonies:
According to Kern County court website information, Garza is being held on $320,000 bail for seven felony charges. Those include inflicting corporal injury on a spouse or cohabitant, threatening with intent to terrorize, assault with a firearm, assault with great bodily injury, false imprisonment with violence, preventing a witness from reporting and rape by force or fear.
It is unknown how long the dog was in the AC truck, who placed him there or whether he was alive at the time. Someone who works near the location of the parked AC truck and smelled the decomposing remains reported it to authorities:
“The Public Works employee reported that the blood was dripping from the vehicle onto the ground,” Arvin Police Chief Louis Cobarruviaz said Friday morning. “And that’s how it was first detected.”
Another worker told Eyewitness News she had spotted “goo” dripping from both sides of the truck.
Police are speculating the dog was already dead, hit by a car, when he was placed in the truck. I have doubts.
Cobarruvias is trying to determine who put the chihuahua in the truck. He said there is no record of the dog being picked up by a police officer.
Therefore I think it’s reasonable to speculate that Mr. Garza is the one who put the dog in the truck. And if you watch the video here, the police chief mentions, in what appears to be an edited clip, “an injured animal” being transported in the truck to the pound in Bakersfield. It’s not clear to me if the injured animal is a reference to the decomposing dog.
The link between domestic violence and animal abuse is well established. While Mr. Garza will have to answer for his alleged crimes against a human being, I hope that there will be a thorough investigation into the death of the decomposing dog in his truck and, if it’s determined that he left the pet there alive, that he will be charged accordingly.
(Thank you Clarice for the links.)
It should’ve still been alive when transported if he was transporting instead of left in the back of the truck because if it was in such bad shape he should’ve sought medical assistance at an animal hospital or vets office.
I wonder why the arresting police officers didn’t bother to check this creeps truck out when he was arrested? Someone should have checked the truck to make sure there weren’t any animals left in it.
I was thinking the same thing.
I always thought it took a weird kind of sick to be an ACO……this certainly does not disprove that theory1
Goodness knows what kind of harm this person has inflicted on animals. I hope the children and women receive some therapy for what they have gone through. Sad story indeed.