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"A West Palm Beach man faces a felony charge of animal cruelty after he left a pit bull outside in the heat until it died, according to Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control.Christopher Gibson was arrested Monday in connection with a September complaint involving a dead pit bull.ALSO: Man Beats Dog, Traps Her In Luggage CarrierA neighbor called ACC to report that his wife had seen a pit bull alive in a small wire cage without shade or shelter in Gibson's yard. When she came home from work, she saw the dog dead inside the cage. They then watched Gibson bury the dog next to the house in a shallow grave.Gibson told an ACC investigator that the dog was a stray he found about nine days earlier. He claimed the dog was malnourished, extremely thin and sick.MOBILE USERS: Watch The VideoAccording to the report, Gibson didn't take the dog to a veterinarian or report that he found a dog.Gibson, who admitted to owning two other dogs that he kept inside, said he thought the dog would be euthanized if he told anyone and was just holding the dog while he looked for the owner. He also said he kept the dog outside because the pit bull wasn't sterilized and wanted to fight other dogs.Gibson unearthed the carcass and gave it to the investigator for a veterinarian to determine how the dog died.The veterinarian later determined that the dog died from heat stroke, according to the report. It stated that the high temperature Sept. 6 was 91 degrees.Gibson's neighbor told WPBF 25 News' John Dzenitis she and her husband would always hear the dog whining and would rarely see Gibson let the dog out of the cage.\"It was horrible to sit in our backyard and listen to the dog whine because it wanted out,\" neighbor Paula Rodgers said. \"(Gibson would) go by and say 'Shut up' to it.\"Rodgers and her husband tried to help the dog cool down on one especially hot day.\"We tried to put a box fan up there to blow some air in on it, but how much air can you get through a fence?\" Rodgers said.Rodgers said she called ACC a few times to report her neighbor, but she claims officers never made it because of short-staffing.Then, Rodgers said, she came home late in the afternoon Sept. 6 and the dog was panting heavily. Thirty minutes later, the pit bull wasn't moving.\"I said, 'I think this dog is dead,' and he was,\" Rodgers said.Follow Pete Burke on Twitter at @PeteBurke.View, Share Breaking News Photos On WPBF.com's u local:9146236"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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