LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – Months after Reba the Bulldog was left to die, taped up in a tote bin, a shocking video of a Chihuahua thrown into a dumpster rattled the Las Vegas Valley.
EXCLUSIVE: Lead detective in Reba the Bulldog’s case talks catching accused killers
The chihuahua, named Marley, is safe and under the care of Horizon Ridge Animal hospital as of Thursday. Reba wasn’t so lucky. She died after being sealed in a tote bin in the summer heat.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Animal Cruelty Section Detectives say both cases had their differences from the jump. However, there were lessons learned from Reba’s investigation.
Mid-April, in a neighborhood near Rancho and Cheyenne, video captures an SUV pulling up in front of a home. A shirtless driver gets out, swinging a small dog in one hand by his side.
He walks toward an open dumpster and tosses Marley inside.
“It’s shocking. It’s enraging. It’s disappointing,” the lead investigator on Marley’s case, Detective Nancy Leyva says. “You wonder what people think when they do crimes like this.”
Leyva says from the moment detectives arrive on scene, it’s a rush against the clock.
“The news outlet is already out there, so we feel like we’re a little behind the curve,” she says.
But she says the location Marley was found at helped compared to where Reba was dumped. It was less in the public eye.
“My case, it was in a residential area. We have video surveillance, we had a car, we had a suspect,” Leyva says.
Detectives began going door-to-door. Leyva says the significance of this relentless follow up from the jump was a takeaway from Reba’s case.
“Maybe you think this is a little too far, or maybe this house is not going to have anything, but you don’t know, maybe it’s that person that’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, this is a tip that can help you the most,’” Leyva says.
The door knocking eventually paid off.
One neighbor recognized the man in the video. With the neighbor’s guidance, detectives drove down the street and notice a similar SUV to the one caught on tape.
Then, they matched the SUV to the suspect’s brother, and got him on the phone.
The man accused of dumping Marley, Alexis Flores, is arrested. He faces three felony animal cruelty charges.
It’s a feeling Leyva describes as “unexplainable.”
“It reassures you of why you’re here, why you took this position, why you took this oath,” she says.
Flores later tells detectives he was teaching Marley a lesson by throwing him in the dumpster after he “nibbled” his daughter.
“This is not just a little tap on the nose to a dog,” Leyva says. “Nothing that somebody could say makes this okay.”
Marley’s investigation was Leyva’s first with Metro’s Animal Cruelty Section as a primary detective. She says it was personal, and she plans to see the case through to the end.
“I just lost my dog recently, a couple months ago. Mickey was a Chihuahua, black and white,” she says. “Mickey was my best friend. Nothing excuses the the conduct of people when they harm an animal this way”
Flores is scheduled for a status check hearing in June.
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