A Spectrum employee was fired and a pug has been returned to his rightful owner on Tuesday after video captured the dog being stolen from a mobile home park in the Riverside area.
The dog’s owner, Melissa Cortez, told KTLA in a phone interview Monday night that her dog Andrew was in her family’s gated yard earlier in the day when the worker came up to the property, opened the gate and took the pup.
Her mother and sister, who were in the residence at the time, noticed the pug missing a short time later, she said.
A neighbor’s home surveillance camera captured the incident, which took place around 12:30 p.m. Monday in the 3800 block of Crestmore Road, in the Old Plantation Mobile Home Park.
Cortez tweeted out the footage Monday evening, tagged Spectrum’s account and wrote, “One of your drivers took my dog.”
A short time later, she tweeted another video showing the incident from a different angle.
The video appears to show a man getting out a Spectrum van, going up to the yard, opening the fence and picking up the dog. He can then be seen running back to his vehicle with the canine before driving off, according to the footage.
A friend of Cortez’s posted the two videos in a Riverside County community group on Facebook, where they were shared hundreds of times.
By the following morning, the pug had been recovered and was reunited with Cortez.
“ANDREW IS HOME!!! Thank you to everyone for your support and help getting my baby back safely,” the grateful owner tweeted.
She told KTLA it was Spectrum personnel who returned her beloved pup.
In a statement emailed to KTLA hours later, the company indicated the worker had been fired.
“As part of its support of the Riverside Sheriff’s investigation, Spectrum security has recovered the dog and has returned it to the owner,” the statement read. “The employee involved has been informed that he has been terminated.”
Spectrum did not identify the worker.
Cortez tweeted that she has filed a police report. It was unclear whether there would be any charges in the case.
KTLA’s Matt Phillips, Jennifer Thang and Steve Bien contributed to this story.