CALIFORNIA -- A dog's owner claimed an officer got trigger happy after her dog was shot during an encounter with police.
Richelle Nice calls her 7-month-old pit bull Mr. Nice. Recently, Mr. Nice and an older pit bull escaped from their home. The dogs eventually ended up at a neighbor's house.
The pair "aggressively" chased the neighbor back into the house and barked outside the door, and the neighbor called 911.
The shooting happened when one of two officers on the scene tried to close a gate to keep the dogs confined until Animal Control arrived, but they said the dogs showed their teeth, barked and lunged at them.
The dogs hesitated when the officers admonished them with "No! No!" but as the officers backed up, one dog resumed barking and lunged so both officers shot once, Commander Dave Bertini said.
Both officers fired a single shot, hitting the younger pit bull. One round hit the dog in the head. It went down for a few seconds, got back up, circled and then both dogs fled to a yard down the street, where they were contained, Mr. Bertini said.
The dogs' 20-year-old owner apologized and said the dogs get free "all the time" despite her best efforts to contain them, Mr. Bertini said.
However, now the owner is complaining that her dog was shot.
"It was ridiculous," Nice said. "I did not understand why they had to shoot him. It's a pit bull; there's a stigma with pit bulls. They don't like them, so kill him."
Nice believes police should have used their batons or pepper spray.
Dave Bertini with the Menlo Park Police Department said the officers acted according to policy.
"This policy that we have, any vicious dog - it doesn't matter if it's a pit bull, Doberman pinscher, or German shepherd - that's irrelevant," Bertini said. "It's whether or not the officer felt in danger for their lives or great bodily injury."
A veterinarian said the bullet shattered some of the dog's bones, leaving lead fragments inside the skull, but missing the brain. The dog should make a full recovery.
The Humane Society "could have issued a License Required citation, but did not feel this was right considering the eight-month-old dog was just shot in the face and the owner was dealing with that," spokesman Scott Delucchi told the Almanac. "I think it's important to note that we have no prior history on these dogs."
"I didn't think it was any big thing," said neighbor Audley Lyon. "Because as far as I'm concerned they are not vicious dogs. They're just puppies acting up."
However, other neighbors called the dogs a neighborhood problem, Mr. Bertini said.
(KPIX - July 12, 2012)
