HORRY COUNTY, SC (WMBF) - Christine Orlando's dog was fatally shot by
an Horry County Police Office early Tuesday morning. Orlando reached out to
WMBF News after her dog was killed because she thought the way the situation
was handled, was wrong.
"My dog didn't have to
die," Orlando said.
According to the Horry County
Police report, two officers responded to an apartment in the county because two
people (Orlando and her roommate) were arguing over the electricity in their
apartment. Once the officers arrived and Orlando opened the door, the report
states her dog, a black flat-haired retriever charged out of the apartment into
the breezeway and began- attacking one officer. Orlando said her dog was not
attacking, but nipping at the officer's ankles.
According to the police report,
the officers each asked Orlando to restrain her dog, but the dog continued to bite
the first officer's feet.
"Never at any moment did
they ask me to bring my dog in the house or give me the option to refrain my
dog in any shape, way or form," Orlando said.
The report states the second
officer pulled out his gun and the dog left the first officer, went back into
the apartment briefly and then charged the second officer. The second officer
shot the dog once in its head, according to the report.
"He shot my dog in the
head. My dog stumbled into the house, laid up against the wall and within 60
seconds, he was dead," Orlando said.
The Horry County Police
Department is not investigating this incident further. The HCPD's policy on
using deadly force states officers can discharge a weapon to destroy an animal
when it represents a threat to public safety. But Orlando said her dog has
never hurt anyone and was not going to hurt the officers.
"These officers need to
get educated on how to handle their responses to animals because his behavior
escalated to a circumstance and it became something that it didn't need to
become¬¬¬," Orlando said.
Orlando said if the officer
felt threatened, she wished he would've handled the situation differently.
"I turned to the officer
and I said, ‘with all due respect, why if you felt the need to shoot my dog,
why couldn't you just shoot him in the leg? Hurt him. Don't kill him,'"
Orlando said.
Neither of the officers
suffered any injuries as a result of the incid