This devastating photo tells the tragic story Heartbreaking
photo shows the grief of a dog owner moments after police shoot dead her
friendly family pet
of a family dog, shot dead
by a police officer as he pursued a robbery suspect on Sunday.
Monkey got caught up in the
chaos of a foot pursuit along Hodges Street in Lake Charles, Louisiana as
officers chased teens believed to have beaten a man in a mall parking lot
before stealing his car which they then abandoned.
The dog was in a back yard
on the street when she heard the commotion and ran out through an open gate.
One of the officers
involved in the chase apparently thought that Monkey was attacking and opened
fired on her.
Monkey's distress owner,
Delores Crochet, witnessed one of the shots being fired and said that
neighbours told her of the three others.
‘He was shooting down like
this,’ Crochet told kplctv.com, gesturing
toward
‘Monkey wasn't jumping on
him or anything. Four times he shot and the bullet went in. She came and met
me, walked over there and she laid down and that's where she died.’
COP ON DOG ATTACKS
In April officers in
Austin, Texas went to the wrong address whenresponded to an emergency call,
pulling a gun on homeowner Michael Paxton and shooting his dog.
The same month British
schoolgirl Susi Ryan was horrified when heavy-handed police tasered the dog she
was watching for a friend because it had grazed her knee.
Also in April police
responding to a disturbance in Jonesboro, Georgia, were accused of 'cold
blooded murder' after shooting a Golden Retriever at the home
Last year cops in
Philadelphia received reports of a dog biting someone on the let but made a
mistake with the address and shot the wrong dog.
Crochet’s son, Chris, told
the news site there must have been an alternative to shooting her.
‘She had not ripped his
clothes, she had not tried to bite him,’ he said, ‘and he shot her instead of
trying to use pepper spray or some non lethal force.’
Deputy Lake Charles Police
Chief Mark Kraus visited the family home to investigate what happened.
‘When the suspect left the
gate open the owner's dog came out of that opening, saw the policeman running
through his yard and approached the policeman,’ he said.
‘The policeman at that
point, thought the dog was attacking him and he shot the dog.’ Kraus added that
it was too soon to know whether the officer used his gun appropriately.
Two youths and a
nineteen-year-old were arrested in connection with the robbery.