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LEHIGH ACRES, Fla. (WFLA) — A South Florida family is mourning the loss of their 3-year-old Rottweiler who was killed in a hit-and-run crash Monday morning, according to a report from NBC affiliate WBBH.
The alleged crash occurred when a van speeding down Zelda Avenue and Sunset Road in Lehigh Acres struck the family dog, Roxy.
The family told WBBH that Roxy slipped out of their fenced yard with a Chihuahua earlier that morning.
Surveillance video from a nearby home captured the van hitting the dog “with such force” that the neighbor heard the impact. The van reportedly never stopped.
“My stomach dropped,” Brett Rosenberg, the resident who caught the moment on video told WBBH. “Enough is enough in Lehigh Acres.”
“I heard it from inside my house,” another resident said. “No doors open or nothing. I heard the impact, it was bad.”
According to the report, the family had to retrieve Roxy’s remains from the middle of the road.
Roxy’s owner, Vicente Solia Peñaloza, told the outlet they had since birth, and that the 3-year-old dog was the daughter of the other two Rottweilers he owned.
“I haven’t seen the video, and I don’t want to see it,” Peñaloza told WBBH. “It’s just too much.”
The owner describes the feeling as overwhelming and that watching the surveillance video would be unbearable. According to neighbors, the family has been in tears since the crash.
“It was an animal this time,” he added. “God forbid, next time, it could be a child.”
WBBH said the Lee County Sheriff’s Office’s Animal Cruelty unit is investigating the incident. Deputies are still searching for the driver of the van and the vehicle.
WFLA.com has reached out for additional information.