AUBURN (WGME) — An Auburn dog is recovering Friday night from severe injuries after being hit by a van.
The dog’s owner is angry that the driver didn’t stop or call for help, and police say there’s not much they can do.
The dog was hit on South Main Street this week, and Auburn police and the district attorney say they are investigating, but so far there are no charges.
Surveillance video appears to show the dog outside a fenced-in area. Seconds later, from another angle, the dog is under a van, then rolling down the road. The video appears to show the driver of the van didn’t stop.
Ron Vye said he hasn’t been able to think about anything else since Wednesday morning when his 2-year-old dog, Bruiser, was hit.
“I share some of the responsibility,” Vye said.
Vye said his young grandson accidentally let the dog out, and because the dog was loose, he said, Auburn police told him there was nothing they could do.
“That gives somebody the right to smash him in the road and leave him for dead? That’s pretty cruel,” Vye said.
Auburn police said they’re looking into what happened, but without a license plate number, they can’t ask the driver for his side of the story.
After CBS 13 asked District Attorney Andrew Robinson about it, he said he would review it.
He said there’s no specific law requiring a driver to stop after hitting an animal. But Robinson said a driver could be charged for leaving the scene of a property damage accident.
That’s what a teenager was charged with two years ago after hitting and killing a dog in Winthrop and taking off.
“I don’t know if he’s going to have any internal damage and that’s what the vet is worried about,” Vye said.
The owner of the dog said so far, he’s spent hundreds of dollars in veterinarian bills. He’d like to find the owner of the van so he can take possible legal action.
He posted the video on Facebook. It had had almost 40,000 views.
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