A Missouri police officer shot and killed his deaf and blind dog on Sunday, first claiming he was doing it to put the animal’s suffering to rest but then retracted his claim and said he feared for the 13-pound puppy’s life.
The shocking killing was captured on police body camera footage and happened just three minutes after officers spotted the escaped dog wandering through a neighbor’s yard.
“In the video you can see he is very playful and happy and when he notices someone there he turns his head and asks to be petted, as he normally does,” his grieving owner, Nicholas Hunter, told The Post on Friday night.
“His demeanor is non-aggressive throughout the entire video. He doesn’t bare his teeth, bark, growl or try to bite. Zero aggression. That’s normal for Teddy, but he’s always been that way.”
Hunter plans to sue the city of Sturgeon, which staunchly defended the officers’ actions in the days after the shooting, sparking outrage in the city of 900 people.
He was having dinner with friends in Columbia when he got a call around 5 p.m. from a friend who told him that their 5-year-old white Shih Tzu mix puppy, Teddy, had run away and was wandering around a neighbor’s lawn, according to a local Facebook group.
Hunter immediately began the 25-minute drive home to retrieve his missing dog, but was not even halfway there when he received a call from a friend with the terrible news.
“It was very shocking and hard to hear. At first I was like, ‘No, it must be someone’s dog, it must be a mistake,’ but then I called the police department and found out it was my dog that had been shot and killed,” Hunter recalled.
When the grieving owner arrived on the scene, officers admitted that Teddy posed no threat, but explained that the puppy was a stray and appeared to be sick. Video obtained by ABC17 shows that.
Hunter asked incredulously. “So… [the dog] “Can we put him out of his misery?” I asked, to which the officer replied in shock, “What can I do? There’s no animal control.”
To add insult to injury, police officers reportedly fined Hunter for letting his dog run loose.
City of Sturgeon staunchly defended the officer who killed the small dog. Claims on Thursday Teddy’s “odd behavior appeared to be consistent with a dispatch report of a dog that was possibly injured or ill.”
But the horrifying body camera footage tells a different story.
Responding to a report of a loose dog, officers are using a catch wad to try and capture little Teddy, but the tiny dog continues to elude capture.
Teddy, who was born deaf and became blind two years ago, had escaped from his outdoor kennel after Hunter’s second dog, Gizmo, dug a hole under the fence. Teddy’s collar got caught on a link, keeping the puppy behind while he sniffed around a neighbor’s yard just a block away.
“The only time the dog will move in any way is when the officer puts the collar on, it moves its head and then it carries on doing what it was doing, just walking. Not running, just walking. Trotting,” Hunter said.
Witnesses corroborated Hunter’s claims, and the woman who reported the found dog to police wrote a letter to the city making it clear she did not believe the dog was a threat to the community.
Witnesses said officers fired two shots at the dog three minutes later while a 17-year-old neighbor looked on.
Although the officer admitted to Hunter that he was not afraid of the dog, the City of Sturgeon later released a statement claiming that the officer had acted out of fear for Hunter’s life.
“Believing the dog to be severely injured or infected with rabies and fearful of contracting rabies through a bite, SPD officers felt they had no choice but to euthanize the animal,” police said. statementThe video, posted on Facebook, prompted hundreds of outraged comments.
A few days later, the city released another statement, emphasizing that “officers acted within their authority, based on the information available to them at the time, to prevent potential harm to members of the public from an injured, sick and possibly abandoned dog.”
Notably, rabies was no longer mentioned in the second statement. The police department did not respond to requests for further comment.
Hunter believes these repeated blunders are an attempt to “cover up mistakes that have been made.”
“It was very extreme. The level of force he used is shocking,” he said.
Hunter said the trauma of the incident was compounded when city officials shifted the blame and never returned his calls, adding that they exhumed Teddy’s body to prove he did not have rabies.
Hunter now plans to sue the city, claiming the officers’ actions were inappropriate and that the situation has caused him and his family emotional distress and grief over the loss of a beloved pet.
“He’s always been a very energetic dog. He’s always had a lot of energy. I mean, he loved interacting with people and he was always really curious about all animals. If he sensed anyone or anything, his tail would start moving as fast as it could and he’d jump up and down with excitement,” Hunter said.
“When this happens he just moves his head frantically to lick the person petting him. Teddy has never bitten or attacked anyone or any animal.”
