A newly-deputized police dog died Sunday in Georgia, after her handler left her alone in a hot car for “an unacceptable amount of time,” said the sheriff’s office where the K-9 provided her services.

Named K-9 Georgia, the dog died in the kennel inside of her handler’s patrol vehicle as the heat index rose to about 100 or 102 degrees in Trenton, a city in the northwestern corner of Georgia, according to the Dade County Sheriff’s Office. The handler had gone into the office building when Georgia was left unattended in the patrol car.

The sheriff’s office said it fired the dog’s handler, who was not identified, and the incident would be turned over to the Dade County District Attorney’s Office to determine if charges would be filed.

“On July 13th, we tragically lost our newest member of our K-9 team; K-9 Georgia,” the office wrote Tuesday in a news release, adding that “a combination” of factors caused the dog’s death.

The sheriff’s office investigated the incident and determined the air conditioning system in the handler’s patrol car malfunctioned while Georgia was inside, to the extent that fixing it required “total replacement of the compressor.” A compressor is the core piece of an air conditioning unit that allows it to emit cool air. 

A heat alarm inside the patrol car also malfunctioned, the office said. The alarm is a safety mechanism designed to monitor the temperature in the car and, when it gets too hot, activate its sirens or send notifications to the cell phone of a K-9 dog’s handler, according to the National Police Dog Foundation, which notes on its website that “heat exhaustion is a major cause of death for active K-9s.” In June 2023, another police dog in Cobb County, Georgia, near Atlanta, died after being left inside its handler’s hot car without a functioning air conditioning system.

The sheriff’s office said the broken temperature systems, “coupled with K-9 Georgia being left unattended for what we considered to be an unacceptable amount of time” inside her handler’s car, contributed to the dog’s death. It plans to implement new policies for handlers, which will include prohibiting them from leaving dogs in their cars unsupervised “for extended periods of time” during the summer. The Dade County District Attorney’s Office is determining whether to prosecute the case.

“Our hearts are aching at the loss of K-9 Georgia,” the sheriff’s office said. “Many of you know that she was donated to us by a local family, at no cost to the sheriff’s office. She was an amazing bloodhound who was sweet, goofy, and had all the potential to be the ‘best of the best’. She will be deeply missed by everyone at our office, and by anyone who had the pleasure to meet her.”