Dog dragged by pickup truck for half a mile down Lake Worth Avenue

WARNING: WINK News has blurred the video, but it may be hard to watch.

Many witnesses told WINK News this was the most painful and gut-wrenching thing they have ever seen.

A dog was dragged by a pickup truck from Lake Worth Avenue to Durant Street for about half a mile.

“A little about this big, just a little dog,” Veteran Jaime Boyle said, starting to cry.

Boyle witnessed the horrifying incident. He told WINK News even through all the wars he’s been in, this was by far the worst thing he has seen.

“Because you know, you’re fighting an enemy. Of course. They’re causing harm to everybody. But when you got an innocent animal just an innocent animal trying to keep up because they can’t untie themselves from that. It’s ridiculous. It’s just it’s, it’s really bad. I’m sorry. I am,” Boyle said.

The footage was caught on neighbors’ security cameras Thursday morning. When they saw that footage —

“I was disgusted, appalled. It’s the blood on the street was horrific. And it’s for someone to do this to an animal and act as uncaring as he did is unforgivable, in my opinion,” Scott Hinchley said.

“You see the drag mark out there were pretty horrific,” Todd Tyler said. Tyler is a neighbor who happened to catch a glimpse of the horror while looking out his window.

He showed WINK News the track of blood from where it started to where it ended.

“Started pretty far away. Down Hotlink Street, which is all the way down to Ackerman Tech right on Aquaman down,” Tyler said. “Yeah, you can also see where the dog stood up and tried to run, you know, bloody paw prints and stuff where it was trying to keep up.”

“My buddy goes, ‘Oh, my God, he’s dragging a dog.’ So I look back. So we stopped, put it in reverse. Got him to stop, and then he bends down and picks the dog. The dog had already passed away,” Boyle said. “And that’s gonna be in my brain for the rest of my life, watching that.”

Charlotte County Officials say the truck appeared to be a 2009-14 Gray Ford F-150 STX extended cab with a ladder rack.

Anyone who recognizes the truck is asked to contact Charlotte County Public Safety at
941-833-5600 or Animal Control at 941-833-5690.