An off-duty police officer shot and killed a family dog in front the dog’s 15-year-old girl. According to new reports, the officer said the pit bull, Carli, charged at one of his smaller dogs and had his Rottweiler by the neck as he and his wife were walking their three dogs. Sierra Blaylock, 15, said Carli was just trying to play with the rottie, and that the officer mistook that as aggression.
Carli had escaped out her an open garage door, and Sierra was trying to get her. The officer told police that he kicked the dog to make her release his dog. When that didn’t work, out came the gun.
Sierra watched her dog’s last moments: “”She tried getting back up and running away, but she couldn’t do it…She looked up at me once. She couldn’t again.”
Her mother, Leticia Clark, says her dog got along with everyone, and was a great family pet, even with her infant. “I’m outraged. I just think it’s so wrong. It was so excessive. There was no reason,” she said. She thinks the Vallejo cop took a tremendous risk, firing his gun in a neighborhood full of kids in the nearby town of Vacaville, and with her daughter so close by. “Just because he’s an officer doesn’t mean accidents can’t happen.”
Carli with Clark's babyIn addition, Clark says “I talked to a number of officers…I was told on scene there was no injury to the couple’s dogs…My dog is not an attack dog. She had obedience training.”
Sierra says she was not far from her dog the officer shot her. Maybe a house distance away. But police say the officer put no one at risk. According to Lt. John Carli, “The shots that were fired were in close proximity to the actual officer and not in the direction of people.”
People in this family neighborhood are shocked. “My dog does the same thing,” Matt Schlief said. “So it kinda makes me feel like if, hey, my dog ever happened to accidentally get out and run toward someone, is he going to get shot?”
The cop will not be facing charges. The family won’t pursue legal action.
Here are are again, Dogsters. Another cop vs. dog. I wasn’t there, I don’t know what happened. But there does seem to be a growing trend toward shooting dogs first, asking questions later. I feel really bad for the girl, who had to watch her dog die this way. That’s a memory that will never go away.
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