McKenzie Catron’s car crashed on her spring break trip to Florida from the University of Arkansas and Sgt. Jonathon Whaley was the first one to arrive on the scene. Another teen in the car told the officer that McKenzie’s pit bull Kai had run away after the accident.
A town came together to rescue a dog owned by a teen died on a car crash on spring break, and a police officer officer drove 770 miles to reunite the dog with her family.
Police tried to search for the frightened dog on the woods near the crash site, knowing kai’s safe return might give the girl’s family some small comfort.
People in Dothan, Alabama who’d never met McKenzie joined the search for McKenzie’s dog, spreading the word through social media. A lawyer in town offered a $1,000 reward for Kai’s safe return.
“We felt we needed to find the dog,” Sgt. Whaley told WAGA News. “We were going to do whatever we needed to do to reunite this dog with this family.”
The lawyer who put up the reward money, Benjamin Irwin, ended up finding Kai after two days of searching. With no one to claim the reward, Irwin donated the money to the shelter from which McKenzie adopted Kai.
“We just really wanted this family to have this piece of their family back, something to help remember their daughter,” he told the Birmingham News.
Sgt. Whaley then volunteered to make the 12-hour drive to deliver Kai home to her family, saying he felt “God impressing on me” to make the 770-mile drive to Bentonville, Arkansas.
Kai was confused and frightened through much of the ordeal, even hesitant when she first got home to McKenzie’s family.
In the video below, as Kai first arrives back in Arkansas, she appears skittish until McKenzie’s boyfriend, Christian, shows up and Kai realizes she’s home.
Sources: Mad World News
Photo Credit: Facebook
