Fight Breaks Out After Woman Helps Dog Locked in Hot Car — But Who is in the Right?

You see a dog locked in a hot car, but the windows are down... what do you do?

That was the dilemma facing Massachusetts woman Jennifer William-Frangie, who after 42 minutes decided to intervene — and earned herself a whole load of abuse from the dog's owner as a result.

The incident happened at the Big Y parking lot in Greenfield on Monday, as fellow witness Joshua Candelaria was filming.

"Just out for groceries and notice a dog locked in his car on a hot day like today. As we look around for the owner we see no one," he wrote on Facebook. "Jennifer Williams-Frangie pulls up and says she had been watching the car for around 20 minutes."

"She opened a door and gave the dog water as he was gasping for air and dying of thirst. We waited a total of 42 minutes for the owner."

And when the owner finally did arrive, with her husband and child, she was not happy that someone had touched her car.

"You touched my door on my car!" she screams in Williams-Frangie's face. "Do you own my vehicle?"

After threatening to call the police on each other — which Williams-Frangie later claims she had already done — the insults start to spill out.

The only reason the dog is soaking wet, they explain, is because he "just went swimming"; the only reason he is shaking "is because you broke and entered my f--king car and touched my private property."

"I'm sorry you're upset, I was trying to help," Williams-Frangie tries to reason, but it doesn't appear to register much, as the female dog owner then lowers the tone even further into racist slurs, while her partner tosses a glass bottle out the window, smashing it.

Further barbs are traded between Candelaria and the couple as they back out — child unrestrained in the back — before they depart the carpark with a bizarre final boast about owning 20 chickens.

On her own Facebook page, Williams-Frangie stood by her decision to intervene.

"It's 85° out, you’re parked on blacktop and even though you've cracked your window about 2 inches you've decided to leave your poor little dog in the car while you grocery shop," she wrote. "I am that person that will sit with your dog and watch to make sure he's OK and then I'm going to break into your car after a certain amount of time and give him a bowl of water."

As it turns out, per Massachusetts law, Williams-Frangie was completely in the right — and would have been legally entitled to smash the windows had they been rolled up, too.

"Please remember that leaving pets in hot cars can be deadly, even with windows open," Massachusetts State Police reminded residents on Facebook last summer.

"If you see a pet in a hot car, call 911 first. Under state law, members of the public can then take action to remove the animal if it is in severe distress and the owner cannot be immediately located."

According to police, when the air temperature is 85 degrees — as it reportedly was in this instance — temperatures inside a car can reach a sweltering 123 degrees in 40 minutes... and rolling the windows down makes very little difference.

A dog, meanwhile, can die of heat stroke in just 15 minutes.