Staff writer
Call Marion police officer Duane McCarty a dog whisperer.
A Harvey County woman stopped Tuesday afternoon at Marion’s Central Park to walk her dogs and soon found a problem.
She walked three of her four dogs and left a small dog in the car, running with the air conditioner on.
“She couldn’t handle all of them at once, so she leaves one or two in at a time,” McCarty said.
When she returned to her car, the dog that was left behind had stepped on a button that locked the door with the keys inside.
The woman had to call police to help her get into the car.
McCarty called locksmith Mike Jeffrey to come unlock the door.
Before Jeffrey could unlock the door, McCarty walked to the other side of the car and looked in at the dog.
The dog stepped on another button and rolled down the window.
“Maybe the dog felt guilty,” McCarty said.
He’s not sure whether the dog will start driving next.
The dog that locked the car door and rolled down the window wasn’t the only interesting note to McCarty’s day.
A cell phone in the back of a trash truck called 911 from two locations as the truck made its way to the transfer station.
The first call came from the 200 block of W. Santa Fe St. The second came from a parking lot on the north side of the city shop.
During both calls, dispatchers could hear voices, but no one talked to them.
McCarty said he talked to people in the 200 block of N. Santa Fe St. and could find nothing amiss.
At the city shop, he talked to public works director Tim Makovec, who said everyone was fine and the trash truck had been in the parking lot at the time.
McCarty said the voices heard by dispatchers apparently were those of sanitation workers riding on the back of the truck.
He surmises that the phone, being pushed when the contents of the truck were compressed, made the calls during those times.
“I wasn’t going to dig through the trash to see if there was a phone there,” McCarty said. “It is cool that dispatch can get a really good location on a phone. That way if somebody needs help, it gets them help.”
Under federal law, even cell phones that have been disconnected from their service plans remain able to dial 911.