CALIFORNIA -- Taft Police shot and killed a pit bull in Taft Heights on Thursday after it was shot once with a Taser and two police officers and an animal control officer were unable to control it with nooses.
Officers described it as a “large, powerful and violent animal.”
That shooting came just a few hours after an off-duty officer shot a pit bull in the yard of her Bakersfield home
It all started just before 2 p.m. when Animal Control Officer Tracy Bryan was dispatched to a report of a vicious dog on the 600 block on A Street.
Lt. Ed Whiting said Bryan found the large pit bull attacking a dog being walked by its owner.
Bryan deployed her Taser, which administered a powerful electrical shock, and the pit bull released the other dog and fled into a back yard at 619 A.
Bryan tried to control the pit bull herself with a noose, Whiting said, but the dog was too strong.
“It was a very large, powerful dog,” Whiting said.
Bryan radioed for assistance and both Taft Police and Kern County Sheriff's deputies responded to the scene.
Two Taft officers, Ray Buford and Moises Martinez, tried to help Bryan control the dog.
At one point the two police officers and the animal control officer had two nooses on the dog but still couldn't control it, Whiting said.
Fearing the dog was going to get loose just across the street from Parkview School with children about to be let out, one of the officers shot and killed the dog, Whiting said.
It was the third time law enforcement officers have shot and killed pit bulls in the area in recent weeks.
In June, a Kern County Sheriff's deputy shot and killed a pit bull that attacked him and last week another deputy shot and killed a pit bull that had a family trapped in a car in Derby Acres, then turned on the deputy.
Earlier in the day off-duty Taft Police officer Veronica Sandoval shot and killed a pit bull in the yard of her Bakersfield home.
(Taft Midway Driller - August 26, 2011)
