Eugene dog dies when left in car after owner’s arrest

EUGENE, Ore. — She was only going to be gone a few minutes, biking down the street for an early morning maple bar, she said.

But when she was stopped by police after initially being suspected in a nearby home burglary on Oct. 5 at 3 a.m., Tamala Toy Lynn Bemis was well aware there were active warrants out for her arrest. And she warned Eugene police that her 13-year-old dog, Magic, was still in her car — which was also her home — parked a few miles away.

Then, police took Bemis away for booking on the outstanding warrants.

It would be 17 days before she was released from the Lane County Jail, having been held on charges including methamphetamine possession and identity theft.

When the jail released her, Bemis returned to her car to find Magic dead inside.

The death stirred up a whirlwind of attention in social media, so much so that the Eugene Police Department on Monday held a news conference to address the issue.

“Magic did not deserve to die this way,” Bemis said in a Facebook post blaming Eugene police for negligence in the death of her dog. “I told the police about my dog in my car, gave them specific directions to where she was.”

The windows were rolled up but the doors were unlocked, she said. Magic had no access to water or food. The Eugene temperature on the day of Bemis’ arrest reached 84, according to the National Weather Service.

Bemis, a self-admitted “longtime drug addict and user of meth,” said she’s devastated by how her dog died.

Eugene police say they will investigate what happened, and hope to somehow make things right.

“We don’t know what happened in great detail at this point,” Capt. Sam Kamkar said Monday, noting that the incident only came to his attention on Sunday, three days after Bemis allegedly found the dog dead. Kamkar said he has tried to contact Bemis, but she doesn’t have a phone and is homeless. He exchanged messages with her through Craigslist, where she also posted her story, but the two have not yet spoken, Kamkar said.

“That’s my top priority right now,” he said of reaching Bemis. “We’re going to look into this and see what happened. We’re going to investigate it and put all of the pieces together to see if we made any mistakes. And if we did, that’s going to get addressed, no doubts about it. But more than anything else, our heart goes out to her because the bottom line is, she lost her dog. Most of us as police officers, we love dogs and a story like that touches every­one’s hearts.”

The Register-Guard has exchanged messages with Bemis but she was not immediately available for comment.

On video taken inside the police car on the morning of Oct. 5 when Bemis was arrested, Bemis can be seen handcuffed in the back, talking about her dog to the officer and explaining that the car — which is not registered to her — is a goldish-colored Hyundai Elantra.

Eugene police have not publicly released a copy of the in-car video, citing privacy for the woman who has not “had her day in court,” police spokeswoman Melinda McLaughlin said. But the video was made available for media viewing, and on it Bemis tells the officer the car is behind a property near Jay Street and Marshall Avenue in the Bethel area of Eugene.

Bemis then tells the officer, “Never mind, she’s old anyways.” When the officer asks her what she just said, she repeats it, explaining that the dog is old.

Kamkar said the officer broadcast to the other available officers in the neighborhood who were investigating the burglary that had occurred. One supervisor looked for but could not find Bemis’ vehicle, he said. Bemis told the officer that her brother does not have a phone and her mother cannot accept collect calls. The officer offered to call Bemis’ mother, but Bemis responded that she couldn’t remember her mother’s phone number or address.

The officer told her to call him if she remembered the number.

(Eugene Police no longer believe Bemis was involved in the Bethel burglary, although the suspect was seen riding a bike away from the scene and had a similar description to Bemis, Kamkar said.)

In the Facebook post about her dog’s death, Bemis wrote that she adopted Magic when the dog was a puppy with deformed front legs that made her not desired by others. A veterinarian later told Bemis, she wrote, that the dog wouldn’t live more than a year.

“I was working two full-time jobs at the time and because she was not big enough to eat on her own I took her to both (of) my jobs with me every day to feed and care for her until she could eat and get around on her own,” Bemis wrote. “Since then, over the years I have become homeless off and on with Magic being of the most important in my life, making sure she was always taken care of and had a place to stay even if I didn’t. She has always been an inside dog. I always made sure she had a warm place to be at night even if for a few times it was in my car with me where I could have the heater going for us.”

Bemis also writes that she admits she is not “a perfect person,” and is a longtime drug addict, but that she has always done her best for Magic, “but I do not believe that my criminal charges mean that it was OK to let Magic die this way.”

“I never ever once in her life left her in the car with the windows up when it was not freezing outside. I always let her out of the car if I had to and she would lay next to it waiting for me to come out of the store if I went into one or I would park in shade with all four windows down and sun shades in front and back windows and always with a big bowl of fresh water. You can ask any one that knows Magic and me very well,” she wrote.