Car was locked and appeared empty, except for the cries from the trunk

An 8-week-old puppy, kept in a crate and locked in the trunk of an unoccupied vehicle, cried out in barks to passing hotel guests late Saturday night.

The guests couldn’t see the puppy stranded inside the Nissan Altima in the parking garage at 5511 N. Ocean Blvd., but they could hear it. They reported it to hotel security, who called the police. The dog had stopped barking before officers arrived around 12:49 a.m. Sunday, according to a Myrtle Beach Police Department incident report.

The vehicle was registered to guests of the Forest Dunes Resort.

Thirty-nine-year-old Bobby Antwon Hudson and 38-year-old Sonya Mckenzie Hudson admitted to officers that they had a dog in the trunk of their vehicle and agreed to come out and open it, the report states.

“When the trunk was opened, an 8-week-old puppy was found inside of a travel crate with no food or water,” Officer T. Eppleman noted in his report.

But the puppy was alive and appeared to be healthy, he noted.

Bobby Hudson told police that they got the dog about two hours earlier, “but claimed the hotel would not allow them to have the dog in the room,” according to the report.

Bobby Hudson was cited for cruelty to animals. The two were allowed to leave the hotel with the puppy in search of another one that would accept pets.

This story was originally published February 19, 2017 at 10:47 AM with the headline "Car was locked and appeared empty, except for the cries from the trunk."