Who let the dogs out?

CEDAR RAPIDS - A neighbor testified that she lent a screwdriver to a Cedar Rapids police officer moments before a pair of dogs escaped their kennel at a flood-damaged home this summer.

“Before she left, she told me I wasn't supposed to say anything, (and) she was never there,” Stacey Kinkaid testified Thursday in Robyn Obadal's trial for criminal trespass.

Obadal, 37, was charged with the simple misdemeanor after the incident July 23 in which a pit bull and a German shepherd were released from their homemade kennel at 1201 10th St. NW. The dogs and the house are owned by Chad Ramey, who kept them there as he worked to make the house habitable.

Kinkaid, who lives two doors down from Ramey's house, testified that she saw Obadal there the morning of July 23.

“She looked upset, frustrated,” said Kinkaid. “She seemed upset about the dogs.”

Kinkaid said Obadal told her she was there “to resolve the situation” and asked her for a screwdriver. Obadal took the tool to the back porch, where Kinkaid saw her “working to get something unscrewed” - presumably the door from the porch to the chain-link kennel.

In a few moments, she said, the dogs came into the yard, where the pit bull jumped into the back seat of Obadal's patrol car and the shepherd ran off.

The officer “gave me the screwdriver and said she couldn't get it screwed back together” before driving off, Kinkaid testified.

Officer Corey Lentz testified that he was dispatched to the house a few minutes after 4 p.m., after Ramey arrived to find the dogs missing. He reviewed photos of the kennel, which was accessible only from the back porch. Screws fastening the door between the porch and kennel were partly removed, and a window screen had been removed and left nearby.

Obadal hadn't reported her presence at the house to dispatchers, he said.

The dogs were found along nearby Ellis Boulevard the next day.

Ramey testified that he kept the animals at the house because “I couldn't have dogs at the location where I was living.”

He said he fed and watered the dogs daily and that they had escaped from the kennel “two, three times before I reinforced it.”

Obadal, who didn't testify, has been on unpaid leave since the incident.

Magistrate Marty Hagge said he'd deliver a verdict by Friday afternoon.