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Jimmy the bloodhound lived in Enriquez’s Davie home with his wife and two children. Enriquez took him to work each day, trained Jimmy and fed and cared for him. Hialeah police considered Jimmy’s adoption “one of the best day’s in Hialeah police history.”
On Wednesday morning after returning home from his midnight shift, Enriquez entered his home without Jimmy and a 4-year-old Belgian Malinois he also cared for named Hector. He left the dogs in the back cabin of a Ford Explorer SUV with the engine turned off.
When Enriquez returned to the car several hours later, the dogs were dead.
What happened in this time frame?
Though Hialeah police wouldn’t give an exact time, they said Enriquez’s midnight shift ended at 7 a.m., and that he was home by sometime “mid-morning.” They said the dogs were alone in the car for four or five hours in the broiling midday sun.....
Enriquez, a 13-year veteran who has spent the past seven years on K9 patrol, has been suspended with pay. While Davie police investigate, Hialeah police are running a parallel investigation into Enriquez’s actions through internal affairs.
....,,The city’s Honor Guard escorted Jimmy and Hector on Thursday from a veterinarian’s office in Hollywood to the lab at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where necropsies will be performed. Zogby promised a full memorial service when the canines’ corpses are returned to Hialeah.
According to Zogby, Enriquez, Jimmy and Hector worked from 11 p.m. Tuesday until 7 a.m. Wednesday. He said the three were delayed several hours because Jimmy was needed to help in the search for an elderly person after Enriquez’s shift ended.
Zogby couldn’t explain why it took until almost 7 p.m. for Enriquez to call Davie police.
... C
If Enriquez is charged with a crime or malfeasance for the unnatural death of a K9 partner it would be unusual, but not unheard of.
In 2007, Miami-Dade police Sgt. Allen Cockfield was charged with animal cruelty after prosecutors determined a kick he administered to his German shepherd Duke during a training session was a fatal blow. Cockfield was later acquitted at trail.
Then in March 2008, Miami officer Rondal Brown was arrested and charged with animal cruelty after his bloodhound Dynasty starved to death.
Dynasty, as was Jimmy the bloodhound, also was donated to the department by the Jimmy Ryce Center, a charity named in the child’s honor. Dynasty was discovered starving and emaciated. Brown later left the police department and agreed to serve probation on animal cruelty charges.
Weighing in Thursday on the loss of the dogs was Don Ryce, Jimmy Ryce’s father and an advocate in helping police find missing children since his child’s murder in 1995 in South Miami-Dade. Jimmy, who did search and discovery primarily for children, was the department’s only bloodhound.
“I am deeply saddened to learn of the tragic death of two remarkable police dogs,” Ryce said. “Our mission is stronger than ever and with the public’s help we hope to be able to raise funds to replace these dogs.”