Woman devastated after puppy stolen from car in San Francisco
San Francisco - Another puppy has been stolen in San Francisco.
Scruggs, a 4-month-old Maltese, has been missing since Monday, and his owner Megan Tran of Los Gatos is heartbroken.
"It's one thing to steal an object, a car, even. But it's like he's our family, he's our, like our little child," Tran said, her voice breaking.
It happened near San Francisco's Union Square.
"My fiance was actually going up to San Francisco on Monday and he was picking up my ring that was being reset and brought Scruggs with him," Tran said.
Tran said her fiance left Scruggs in a parking garage at Sutter and Kearny. All four windows were down a crack.
"Within a span of 20 to 30 minutes, he came back and Scruggs was gone," Tran said. "We're really ignorant to even assume that we could keep him safe in our car."
But there's a twist to the tale.
"There were fingerprints in the windows," Tran said.
Those prints and surveillance video led police to arrest Viengphet Sasone, 43, in the Tenderloin for allegedly stealing Scruggs. But he didn't have the dog. And, there was another problem.
"Sasone refused to tell investigators where the puppy was located," said Officer Robert Rueca, a San Francisco police spokesman.
Rueca said police are exploring a number of possibilities, including "whether the dog was sold, whether the dog was found, by someone out there in the public."
Tran said she was told by police that the suspect is "somebody who does not have a home, so we're probably guessing that, you know, he sold him for a little bit of money to either another homeless person, somebody else in that area."
This is just the latest dognapping case in San Francisco.
Police are still trying to find the men who attacked Sarah Vorhaus in Russian Hill and stole her French bulldog puppy, Chloe, in January.
Tran said she hopes she'll be reunited with Scruggs soon.
"I'm just shocked that someone would have it in them to not look at a puppy and just like realize it belongs to someone," she said.