Body cam released after couple arrested for allegedly locking 36 dogs in a U-Haul in Oklahoma City

An Oklahoma City couple is behind bars after OKC Animal Welfare and police discovered their U-Haul full of over 30 dogs in a Walmart parking lot.

Officers say staff at the Walmart called them on Monday when they noticed a U-Haul in the parking lot in the middle of a hot afternoon, that sounded and smelled like it was completely full of animals, inside the U-Haul officers found 36 dogs.

"We discovered 36 dogs had been left inside there," said Jon Gary with OKC Animal Welfare. "About three or four dogs were in heat distress, and so we had to start taking procedures immediately."

Animal Welfare officers were called to the scene in the middle of the afternoon heat.

"You know it's probably going on about 10 hours or so eight to 10 hours that they were in there," Gary said.

All of the dogs were found alive, but one had to be euthanized after its organs began to fail,

"We had the one that, unfortunately, we thought he had gotten through it, but he just went into some other side effects from heatstroke," said Gary.

According to police, the temperature outside was 84 degrees when the rescue happened.

The U-Haul was parked in the sun, and the inside reached over 100 degrees.

"People leaving dogs in cars, only take seconds, or you know less than a minute for dogs to become into heat stress... actually, probably just minutes before their situation where it can be deadly for them," Gary said.

Animal welfare says cages were stacked on top of one another inside the truck. They say the conditions of the kennels were filthy, and the odor was, "Overwhelming."

"Many of the dogs were kind of urine-soaked from being left in kennels and crates inside there, so we had to get them cleaned up," said Gary, "Many of them have actually been groomed, we did that whenever they got here, just because they were matted in and had urine on them."

Both face 36 felony counts of cruelty to animals, one misdemeanor count of transporting animals in a cruel or inhumane manner and one count of violation of the commercial pet breeders and animal licensing act.

Animal Welfare says most of the dogs seem to be recovering well, one of them even just gave birth to a litter of puppies.