A missing puppy has been found and three 13-year-olds apprehended for shoplifting after a theft Monday from a local pet store.
The dog was found and returned Tuesday afternoon after Anthony’s Pets owner Tony Taboas saw the teens who police believed had stolen the puppy, Bloomington Police Capt. Steve Kellams said in an email. The teens were referred to juvenile probation.
Earlier in the day, before the dog had been found, Taboas expressed concern for the stolen canine’s well-being. She is sick and had been in the midst of treatment for an upper respiratory infection.
“Nothing super serious, but she needs her antibiotics,” Anthony’s Pets owner Tony Taboas said. “She was doing well and on the mend, but going off them will not be good.”
The 3-month old pup was too new at the store to have a name. Her brother had been taken by a new owner a few days earlier through the proper channels. However, the unnamed beagle-English bulldog mix — Beabull Doe, perhaps — exited Anthony’s Pets under graver circumstances.
Police responded at about 8 p.m. Monday to the store, though by that time, she was already gone. The scene of the crime was a makeshift sick room in the back of the store.
About 6 p.m. that night, a group of four teenagers came into the store, Bloomington Police Department Capt. Steve Kellams said. They kept leaving and reentering the store, which made the manager on duty suspicious. At about 7 p.m., the manager went to the back room and found it locked. When he opened the door, he found the kennel door open and the brindle-and-white beabull gone. A door across the room exits the store.
Security camera footage showed a teenage girl entering the sick room but does not show her leaving, Kellams said, which points to the back exit as the getaway route. Taboas, who has owned the store for seven years and worked in the pet industry since 1991, has had animals taken before, he said.
“It doesn’t happen often,” he said. “Usually it’s just kids being stupid.”
The beabull pup was a recent arrival at Anthony’s, Taboas said. She’d come to the store Feb. 23. Potential owners are sometimes turned off by pre-named pets, and employees get attached enough without naming the animals, so she hadn’t been given a name.
The crime was designated shoplifting.
She may have been nameless and for sale, but this beabull also lived and breathed — perhaps with some difficulty — as she was taken from her kennel.
