GOLDEN VALLEY, AZ (AZFamily) — A call about cats baking in a parked truck in northwestern Arizona turned into a much bigger animal cruelty case involving kittens, rattlesnakes and deadly conditions.
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Mohave County Sheriff’s Office deputies said someone spotted a truck that had been parked for a while with multiple cages of cats in the direct sun Saturday at a house on Arizona Highway 68 near Adobe Road.
Deputies and Mohave County Animal Control officers arrived and found the cages in the truck’s bed and saw a cage of kittens inside the truck’s cab, with one of the kittens being dead.
While removing the kittens from the truck, officers saw an aquarium-type habitat. The owner of the truck, David Leslie Cox, 75, of Hesperia, California, said a baby Mojave green rattlesnake was inside.
When officers looked around the truck, they said they found multiple buckets holding live and dead rattlesnakes.
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After searching the truck, deputies said they found nine adult cats, six kittens, including one dead, and five rattlesnakes, including two that were dead.
Cox was booked into jail on 22 counts of animal cruelty and a felony count of endangerment after deputies said he did not tell officers about the rattlesnakes before officers went into the truck.
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