Suspect in theft of 2 puppies at Las Vegas Petland arrested
Police have arrested a suspected puppy-napper, but they only recovered one of the two canines he is accused of stealing.
Sean Ross, 31, was taken into custody Monday near North Decatur and West Rome boulevards, in connection with a smash-and-grab burglary last week at Petland in Boca Park. Las Vegas police did not say how they identified Ross as the suspect.
In his mugshot released by the Metropolitan Police Department on Tuesday, Ross looked like a different man than the one shown in the store’s surveillance footage. Detectives confirmed that Ross had shaved his head after the footage began circulating in the news and on social media.
At the time of his arrest, there were no signs of the missing 2-month-old Pomeranian and slightly older German shepherd puppy stolen early Friday. But police issued an update soon after saying they had found the German shepherd and returned it to the pet store.
No details on the recovery of the older puppy were immediately available.
During questioning, police said, Ross was under the influence of an unspecified controlled substance and did not provide any information about the puppies.
In an interview late Friday morning, store owner Jeff Faussett told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the puppies could die if they aren’t fed properly.
The Pomeranian puppy weighs just 2 pounds and “needs nutrition every two hours,” Faussett said, otherwise the puppy will go into hypoglycemic shock “and will die very quickly.”
Surveillance footage provided to the Review-Journal of the pet store shows a man breaking the glass of the front door with a skateboard at 6:39 a.m. Friday.
He was last seen on the footage a minute later, fleeing out the front door and holding the skateboard and both puppies in his arms.
The same man visited the store Thursday night, and could be seen in security camera footage walking around the pet store just after 8:50 p.m., his skateboard in tow.
Anyone with information on the puppies is asked to call Metro at 702-828-8577 or Crime Stoppers at 702-385-5555.
Contact Rio Lacanlale at rlacanlale@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @riolacanlale on Twitter.
