FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) - A pair of puppies have been reunited with their owner after they went missing during a deadly car crash in Central Florida.
The puppies, who are brother and sister, belong to Marritsa Melendez.
Marritsa, her father, her sister and the puppies were all in a car crash in rural Osceola County, south of Orlando, Dec. 17.
Marritsa remembers lying on the pavement injured moments after the crash.
“A woman approached me, and she said, ‘Don’t worry. I have your puppies. They’re fine. I have them. I’ll call,’ and she just walked away from me,” said Marritsa. “I don’t know who she was.”
In the hospital, Marritsa learned her father was killed.
“You have a feeling that it could be somebody in the vehicle, so I figured it probably was my dad,” she said.
The woman who took Marritsa’s puppies never reached out.
“I just want them back,” Marritsa said in late December.
Two weeks later, near Fort Lauderdale, Broward Animal Control employee Krystal Mapp happened to be looking at Craigslist and saw Marritsa’s post.
“It said like, ‘lost, stolen,’ and then it had like some other … It was a really big headline,” said Mapp.
Mapp recognized the two puppies from their “back holding area.”
The puppies had been abandoned in a Broward apartment after the residents were evicted.
The staff reached out to Marritsa. Her boyfriend, Chris Walsh, arrived to take the puppies back to Connecticut since Marritsa is still recovering from the crash.
“I’ve been on the road since 2:30 this morning,” said Walsh.
“He was here by noon today,” said Mapp.
“She lost a dad, and that’s tough, you know, but these pups would certainly make it a lot easier for her to deal with it,” said Walsh.
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