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As a family continues their desperate search for the dog that chewed through her crate and escaped across the tarmac at Tampa International Airport, they say Delta and airport officials are refusing to help.
Last Wednesday, four-year-old hound-mix, Brady was scheduled for a Delta Airlines flight out of Tampa to join her family who’d recently relocated to Bermuda. Instead, airport officials say the dog chewed through the metal bars of her crate and escaped.
She was spotted running across the tarmac before disappearing into a wooded area bordering the airport.
Owner William Gideon recently accepted a job in Bermuda, where he and his family relocated. Bringing Brady to the island was handled by a company that specializes in transporting pets. “There were no problems at first,” Gideon told PEOPLE. “But when she got to Tampa International, Brady chewed through the crate and ran off the tarmac.”
Desperate to find their dog, the family turned to Delta and the airport for help.
“I assumed that Delta and the Tampa International Airport had a protocol for when things like this happen,” says Gideon. “But they really haven’t done anything. They basically say that this is my problem, not theirs.”
Delta airlines did fly the family to Tampa and arrange hotel accommodations during the search, but that’s where their assistance in finding the missing family member ended.
When the family requested Brady’s crate and blankets from the airline to use in scent tracking, they were told that everything had already been cleaned. When asked for surveillance video of the cargo area from which she escaped, the airline said that no footage exists.
In the immediate days after Brady’s disappearance, there were a couple of sightings by people in the vicinity of the airport, but no sightings have been reported in several days.
On Monday, tracking dogs were brought into the area to search for Brady. The family, desperate to find the dog, likely injured and bleeding as a result of chewing through her crate, aren’t giving up until they have answers.
Brady is microchipped. There is a $1,500 reward for her return. Anyone with information is asked to contact Hillsborough County Pet Resources at 813-744-5660.
