Fort Worth

Police, Passerby Help Save Abandoned Puppies in Fort Worth

The Fort Worth Police Department, a local business and an anonymous passerby all played a role in an animal rescue last week.

On the morning of June 4, a woman was walking northbound on South Main Street near John Peter Smith Hospital when she spotted a plastic bag that was partially torn. Inside she found the disturbing sight of 10 pit bull puppies, left for dead on the sidewalk of a bridge. [[306785551,L]]

"It's pretty shocking," said Rudy Martinez, who owns Lone Star Printing, located a half-block down the street. "There's little, 10 little puppies in there."

The woman moved the puppies to the shade of a nearby tree and then went to Martinez for help in calling someone.

"I just found it a little inhumane," Martinez said. "If you can do that to some dogs, what else can you do?"

What Martinez did next was call Officer Gigi Hempstead, a 16-year veteran of the Fort Worth Police Department. The neighborhood south of JPS is in her beat and she's helped Martinez with the theft of his store's guard dogs on occasion.

Dumped and left for dead on a Fort Worth street, a whole litter of puppies found in a plastic bag gets a second chance at life

Hempstead said that at first she couldn't hear or see any dogs on the bridge, but then Martinez led her to the tree and that's when she saw them for herself.

"That's the first time I've seen puppies in a bag," she said.

Hempstead has worked several animal cruelty cases in her career and filed a report for this one as well. She also knew just what to do in order to keep the 10 puppies alive, as she fosters dogs herself. Martinez gave her a box and she went to get some formula for the puppies before putting a plea out on social media to find a foster home.

"You could hear them, they were yelping pretty good," Hempstead said. "They were hungry. There was actually a tiny one on the back of the tree that I almost didn't see. If I had not walked all the way around the tree and looked down I might have missed that one."

Seven surviving puppies are now under the care of rescuers after they were discovered in an abandoned plastic bag last week along a busy Fort Worth street.

Hempstead said she checked back at the tree two more times that day to make sure she didn't miss any of the puppies. She and Martinez believe someone tried to throw the puppies over the bridge, but were unsuccessful and they landed on the sidewalk.

"We don’t know if the mom died or not so they got rid of the puppies, or if they just decided they didn’t want the puppies, so it makes it difficult," Hempstead said about finding those who were responsible for abandoning the puppies.

A foster group called Cody's Friends Rescue took the 10 puppies to a foster home in Cleburne. Sadly, only seven of them have survived nearly a week later.

But Hempstead said with the temperature rising last Thursday throughout the day, it could have ended much worse for all 10 if not for the woman who first spotted them.

"The girl saved the dogs' life, she did," the officer said. "She gets all the credit on this one."

Dozens of lost and abandoned dogs from across North Texas are on the move to the Northeast in an effort to ease overcrowding in local animal shelters. Video courtesy of The Humane Society of Flower Mound

And the surviving pups now have a much better fate than the side of the road.

"If there's an animal in need I'm going to help," said Hempstead.

NBC 5's Jamie Weiss contributed to this report.

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