A bulldog died after her owner left her for about 35 minutes in his truck in a downtown Roanoke parking lot last summer.
On Monday, a Circuit Court judge dismissed animal cruelty charges against the man and his girlfriend.
James D. Lipscomb, 38, and Ashleigh M. Hutton, 39, were each indicted by a Roanoke Circuit Court grand jury in December on two counts, one felony and one misdemeanor, of animal cruelty in connection with the June 2023 incident that involved two dogs: female bulldog Cookie and male pit bull Meech.
Lipscomb and Hutton took their cases to trial together Monday, both pleading not guilty on all counts. After about five hours of testimony, Judge Christopher Clemens decided that he could not find Lipscomb, who runs an American bulldog breeding business, or Hutton guilty.
“I’m shocked that you think you can breed animals,” the judge said. “You don’t leave your kids in the car locked up. … If you really care about your animals, you treat them like family.”
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Attorneys presented evidence that at about 12:30 p.m. June 25, Lipscomb and Hutton parked Lipscomb’s pickup truck, a black 2007 Honda Ridgeline, in the parking lot in the 100 block of Luck Avenue Southwest, behind the Texas Tavern and Macado’s and adjacent to Martin’s Downtown.
The couple took Cookie and Meech for a walk for about half an hour, then returned to Lipscomb’s truck, where their attorneys, Roanoke-area defense lawyers Cathy Reynolds and Tony Anderson, said the couple provided the dogs with water, even splashing it over their backs to cool the pups down.
After about five minutes, having returned the dogs to the back seat of the truck, Lipscomb and Hutton walked toward the Texas Tavern to get some lunch. Attorneys said the couple left the truck on, with the air conditioning running and all four windows rolled down about 3 inches.
Texas Tavern surveillance footage captured Lipscomb and Hutton entering the restaurant shortly after 1 p.m. They ate, Lipscomb eating two bowls of chili, then left the establishment around 1:40 p.m.
In the time that the couple was gone, a woman had observed Cookie and Meech through the truck windows. She called 911 around 1:25 p.m. to report her concerns about the dogs, which she told the dispatcher were panting heavily and drooling everywhere.
Two Roanoke police officers got to the Luck Avenue scene shortly before 1:40 p.m., according to their body camera footage. They observed Cookie and Meech through the back windows of the truck. Then, using a baton, one of them reached through the crack in the driver’s side window to unlock the vehicle.
The truck’s alarms sounded as the officers attempted to use leash poles to retrieve the two dogs from the back seat, but one officer testified that Meech growled at him, so they called for support.
At 1:43 p.m., according to area surveillance video, the officers made contact with Lipscomb and Hutton as the couple walked out of the Texas Tavern. Lipscomb explained to police that he had used the remote start button on his key fob to keep the air conditioning in the truck running, but that the system had shut off by default after about 10 or 15 minutes.
One of the officers returned to his patrol vehicle to complete paperwork, but then he testified he heard a scream. He returned to Lipscomb’s truck, where the man was trying to provide medical aid to Cookie, who appeared deceased.
Lipscomb and Hutton removed Cookie from the back seat of the truck and laid her on the ground. According to body camera videos, officers were unable to detect any signs of life.
Cookie’s body was transported away from the scene for a necropsy, which found that a heat stroke had caused her death, a forensic pathologist testified Monday.
Meech was transported to an emergency veterinarian, who testified Monday that he was bright, alert, responsive and “overall pretty good” when he arrived in her care. He stayed at the vet facility overnight and was discharged the next day.
Anderson and Reynolds argued during their closing arguments Monday that while Lipscomb and Hutton may have acted negligently towards Cookie and Meech, their behavior was not criminal.
Quoting child abuse case law, Anderson argued that gross negligence requires more than “good intentions coupled with bad judgement.” Reynolds agreed that inattention and misguidance do not amount to willful neglect.
“It was an accident,” Reynolds said, arguing that people who are criminally negligent “must know and not care.” The attorney said Lipscomb and Hutton were both “emotionally distraught” at Cookie’s death.
Assistant Commonwealth Attorney Joshua Deitz argued that while Lipscomb and Hutton clearly had no intention of harming their animals, they acted with “inexcusable carelessness” and created a situation where injury to the dogs was probable.
“They should never have left them in the car,” Deitz said Monday. “There’s just so many ways that this situation could have been avoided.”
Clemens found that while Lipscomb and Hutton’s judgement was bad, their behavior was not negligent, and their cases were dismissed.
Emma Coleman (540) 981-3198