A police officer has been fired after being charged with animal abuse for killing his K-9 partner in Missouri.

The Savannah, Missouri, Board of Aldermen voted in a closed session Monday to terminate Lieutenant Daniel Zeigler, the city announced on a social media post.

Zeigler has been charged with one count of animal abuse, which is a class A misdemeanor, and is scheduled to appear in court on October 8 in Division 5 of Andrew County Circuit Court.

A statement by the Savannah Police Department said: “In a close session meeting on Monday, September 9, 2024, the Savannah Board of Alderman voted to terminate employment with Lieutenant Daniel Zeigler.”

Newsweek has contacted the Savannah Police Department for comment.

According to a probable cause affidavit filed in Andrew County Circuit Court, Zeigler and his K-9 partner, Horus, a full-breed German shepherd, finished their overnight shift at 4:49 a.m. on June 20. At 5:54 p.m., Zeigler contacted Police Chief Dave Vincent to report that Horus was dead.

The affidavit states that Vincent discovered Horus had been left in the police vehicle all day and died from heat exposure.

Horus joined the Savannah Police Department in 2021 when he was nearly 2 years old, police said. Savannah is located about 45 minutes north of Kansas City.

According to court records, investigators tested the AceK9 system in Zeigler’s vehicle on June 26 and found that the safeguard was fully functional on the day Horus died.

When tested, the system repeatedly honked, rolled down the rear windows, and activated a fan once the vehicle’s internal temperature reached 90 degrees.

Court documents state that the system was working properly and would have had to be manually deactivated to bypass the safeguard. The Kansas City International Airport recorded a high of 88 degrees at 3:53 p.m. on June 20, 2024, according to the probable cause statement.

“This test demonstrated the AceK9 system inside the Savannah Police K-9 vehicle was in working order and would have had to been manually turned off/deactivated on June 20, 2024,” prosecutors wrote. “The deactivation of the AceK9 system directly contributed to the death of K-9 Horus by removing a safeguard to prevent such an incident.”

Witnesses reported hearing Zeigler say he thought he had brought Horus inside after his shift.

Another witness, who helped bury the K-9, told investigators they heard Zeigler tell Chief Vincent that Horus’ death was his fault.

Horus’ death sparked outrage in the Savannah community and beyond, with many calling for justice for the K-9.

In Missouri, animal neglect is considered a Class A misdemeanor. It is punishable by up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $2,000.

The severity of the punishment depends on the nature of the crime.

Misdemeanors are considered less serious than felonies in the United States.

First-term offenders are likely to receive a misdemeanor.

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Missouri football might just have an effort problem.

No, not the indifferent, uncaring kind.

The Tigers, when it comes to the multiple holding penalties that cost them yards during Saturday’s win over Buffalo on Faurot Field, might be trying too hard to finish off some blocks.

“You know, we’ve got to learn to let go. When the ball is out, (when there’s) leverage, when a defender is broken away, we cannot continue to engage with the jersey of the defender,” Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz said. “And, so, there were three of those that were clear calls — easy, easy calls that are something that we have to correct. 

“And you appreciate guys playing with effort and energy, but they’ve got to know when it’s crossing the line into a penalty.”

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The Mizzou offense still is off to an efficient start. The 2-0 Tigers have averaged more than 200 rushing yards per game, and they took what was offered to them in the passing game to comfortably knock off the Bulls.

But the penalties are a lingering issue. Especially with 24th-ranked Boston College on deck.

The Tigers had five flags thrown against them for holding vs. the Bulls, although only four of those stood on the final stat sheet. One holding call against wide receiver Mookie Cooper was declined by Buffalo because the Bulls picked Brady Cook off during the same play.

“I mean, up front our mentality is we’re trying to finish people all the time,” Missouri left guard Cayden Green said. “So, sometimes we go a little bit overboard. We’ve just got to work on not going so overboard.”

Two of the fouls went against offensive linemen, with Green picking up one and right tackle Armand Membou inviting the other. The others were called against tight ends Tyler Stephens and Jordon Harris.

Missouri now has 17 offensive penalties on the season, and exactly zero of those have gone against the Tigers’ defense. Only one came on special teams, when the Tigers took a delay of game on a punt against Murray State.

In addition to the four holding calls against Buffalo, the Tigers had three holding penalties against Murray State. That’s going to take a little more cleaning up than, quite literally, letting go.

“You know, we’ve just got to work on getting our hands inside,” Green said. “We talk to refs before the game and during the week so we can see what kind of officiating we’re dealing with, and so we just work off of that throughout the week, work on getting our hands inside and finishing blocks, but not finishing, you know, in a bad position.”

Those four holding calls were part of a much larger issue from the offense Saturday. The Tigers incurred 10 offensive penalties om all, which cost them 80 yards.

Three of those were formation penalties: two on ineligible receiver calls; one on illegal formation. Those drew the ire of the head coach more than perhaps any other offensive misstep.

“Well, quite honestly, the alignment penalties are just embarrassing,” Drinkwitz said. “As the head football coach, that’s on me. That’s undisciplined football, and for me to allow that to happen — we had an alignment penalty in the first game, and to have it again in the second game? That’s on me. So, that’s got to get corrected (and) get taken off the tape.”

That prompted the Tigers, per the head coach, to carve out a period of their Monday practice and dedicate the time to alignment and alignment alone.

The remaining three penalties called on MU’s offense Saturday were a facemask violation on backup right guard Mitchell Walters and a pair of false starts.

“The other ones — we’ll be alright,” Drinkwitz said. “We’ll figure that out.”

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)

Cheryl Howard, the executive director of the Nora Stewart Early Learning Center, is one of thousands of childcare providers across the state relying on state reimbursements to keep their daycare alive.

However, due to a backlog in the state, Howard says the NSELC, which has been operating in Columbia for 91 years is in jeopardy. 

“In the last two to three years our enrollment has dropped half. We have not received the grants we applied for so that is hurting us real bad,” Howard said. 

Howard was one of dozens of daycare providers to testify in front of the Missouri House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee on Tuesday after technological issues delayed state reimbursement payments for months, putting daycare centers at risk or out of business entirely across the state. The Department of Secondary Education was grilled by committee members after more than 3,000 childcare providers were left waiting for subsidy payments from the department. 

Three members of the Harris family, who have worked in childcare for more than 40 years, said they had to sell their car, shut off their utilities at home and dig deep into their Social Security to keep their daycare center alive. Even with all of that, they say they are $60,000 in debt. They were not alone. 

Latonya Williams, the executive director of the Bartlett Center, which specializes in children with trauma, told the committee that if her business closes most of the children they provide service for will have nowhere to go. 

“I have over 100 kids in my program and I’m about 98 percent childcare subsidy. Up until a week ago, I had not received any payments,” Williams said during the hearing. “I had eleven thousand dollars in the bank. I have been using my own money to buy cleaning supplies for our program.” 

The state has pointed the finger at a new data system launched last December, which has led to a backlog of payments. Many daycares rely on those payments to fund staff and stay in business. The new data system has also caused issues with attendance, with many who testified at the hearing saying they were unable to get any support when they called and asked for help. 

“There won’t be a modicum of satisfaction until these providers are paid and paid with some manner of interest. I’m listening to people take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans that they’re going to have to pay interest on people who you’re talking about how their lights are off just so they can continue to provide services for this state’s children in alignment with this current gubernatorial administration,” Rep. Raychel Proudie (D-Ferguson) told ABC 17 News after the hearing. “What they were saying is that they were going to provide for these people. Somebody has to make good on what we said that we were going to do for these people. And frankly, we just simply weren’t doing that.” 

Minority Floor leader Crystal Quade (D-Springfield), who took part in the hearing, says that she would like to see the state issue payments now.

“What we’ve been told over the past few weeks is that this is an IT problem. And it goes down to the fact that they have to recertify not only these parents with these providers in check attendance and all of these things. That is all fine and well, I understand that there is a system that has to be done to verify that the kiddos know where they are and that the payments need to be made,” Quade said. “That said, we have so many providers who are already contract providers with the state of Missouri. We have parents who are already certified to be receiving these subsidies and we could right now issue checks in this moment to those providers to cover these costs for the folks that we know are already qualified.” 

Once the new data system was launched in December, the state began to encounter backlogs in payments. The problem snowballed into issues for families trying to apply for subsidy assistance and provider contracts.

Part of the issue is attendance. Under the system, parents are forced to take attendance for their own children, which has been a nightmare for daycares and affected payments. The system only operates for Android users and is outdated. DESE says that the attendance system was put into place in 2018 before the new data system was launched. The vendor contracted to operate the new system and subsidy program is World Wide Technology, which operates out of St. Louis.  

Quade said its a multi-layered issue that starts at the top. 

“I think that we need to be having conversations about should the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, be the ones overseeing our early childhood subsidy program. The point that was made today, we have a lot of these families who qualify for multiple services,” Quade said. ”It goes back to the fact that we don’t have direct care caseworkers, that our call centers are outsourced and that we have had folks in charge in our state continue to lay off state employees and outsource this stuff to private entities, to their buddies or whoever, instead of actual employees of the state who are doing the job well.“

DESE said during the hearing that it will begin issuing stipends “sometime this week” but for many it’s too little too late. 

“It is already too late. There are, especially in the Saint Louis area where I can speak to because that’s where I live, they’ve already closed. There are people who already have creditors closing,” Proudie said. “The apologies that these folks were offered here today can’t pay their electric bill. Their gas bill  is not going to pay their rent if they’re renting a space.”

On Wednesday, there will be a budget committee hearing to address concerns about how much these issues cost and what potential solutions could look like. Quade advises parents impacted to contact her office or their local elected official to share their story.

Proudie still has questions.

“I want to know what happened with the differential for people who are opening up their hearts, opening up their centers to take children who are, you know, suffering through poverty there that are lower-income kids, and that’s the majority of their center. They were assured and promised that they would get a 30 percent differential. And if they spent the money on becoming accredited, would get an additional 20 percent all of a sudden, out of the blue, there was a decision made not by the legislature, but by someone in staff to stop doing that, which will certainly hurt centers,” Proudie said. “They weren’t prepared for it. No one told them it was coming. I want to know who made the decision and I want to know why. I also want to know what they intend to do with their money. They’re not going to pay it to providers like they told them that they were going to.”

Check back for updates.