Police arrest woman accused of abandoning dog in the woods in South Windsor

Police have arrested a woman they say abandoned a dog in South Windsor last month.

Janiya Bradford, 26, of Manchester, turned herself in on Thursday and was charged with cruelty to animals.

She is accused of attaching the dog's collar to a large tree branch in the Frank Niederwerfer Wildlife Sanctuary and abandoning him there.

A person out walking their dog spotted the abandoned pup on April 22 and called police.

The dog's collar had the name "Kobe" written on it, but his name has since been changed to Obie.

Police said the power of social media helped in this case.

“Everyone’s seen the photograph of Kobe attached to that tree branch,” said Sgt. Mark Cleverdon with South Windsor police. “That drew a lot of people, and we got call after call, email after email, people providing us with information. I truly believe that level of aggressiveness from the public kind of forced the suspect to come in here to have a conversation with us about it.”

They tell NBC Connecticut Bradford walked into the police department the day after the story went public and told officers a story they believed didn't add up.

A neighbor living near where the dog was dumped provided investigators with surveillance video which pieced it all together.

“We were able to get some surveillance footage from across the street from the sanctuary where the dog was dropped. It kind of locked us into a timeline of when she had dropped the dog off, and we compared that to her initial story she gave us and it certainly didn’t match up,” Cleverdon said.

Bradford was released on $5,000 bond is scheduled to be in court June 5.

Obie is officially up for adoption as of Friday, according to police.

“He is going to have some special requirements. He’s not fond of men, very, very timid with them, very scared. So we’re gonna try to work through that if we can, if not, he’s gonna have to go to a strict female-only home,” said community service officer Kaley Curtis.

Curtis said more and more people are dumping animals. Just in the last few weeks in South Windsor, two dogs were dumped. One, in a commuter lot, and another in someone’s backyard.

“Obviously prices are going up, vet care is going up, food is going up, and that’s not just for us humans it’s for pets too,” Curtis said. ‘It’s happening every day, even though it’s not public out there, it’s happening every day.”

She said there is always a safe way to surrender a pet, at animal control or a shelter.

In Obie’s case, they’re grateful it worked out the way it did.

“There’s a lot of stories out there where the owners aren’t found. We have a couple other cases going on right now which are similar, we haven’t had anyone come forward with it yet. It’s kind of a rarity to have somebody come forward and admit to it.”