Dog shot in city park

[Sangiovese]

All of the "witnesses" in the story who say how non-threatening the dog was admit that they DID NOT SEE the events immediately prior to the attack. They all say they heard the shot and turned around.

I don't care how well behaved an animal "always" is. It only takes one incident to kill a child or maim them for life. ONLY the owner and the shooter and his children saw the dog's actions immediately prior to it getting shot. Obviously they disagree on what happened... but if you actually read the story, there are no impartial witnesses to the only actions that mattered... the dog's actions immediately prior to the shot.

How many cold blooded killer's relatives have you seen sobbing to the media that their little angel could never have done something like that?? How many serial killers' neighbors and coworkers say, "he seemed like such a nice guy?? How many dog owners whose pets have mauled someone say things like, "he's never bitten anyone in his life"??

I'm sorry, but an animal's history of non-aggressive behavior doesn't mean beans if that animal is currently threatening your children. It might be a one in a million occurrence - but if it is MY child who winds up being that one in a million person that the dog decides to attack, there is going to be a dead dog.

We don't know, nor are we likely to ever find out if the dog was behaving in a way that a reasonable person would find seriously threatening. It is a classic he said, she said situation.

What we DO know is that he was legally armed and a large unleashed dog was in very close proximity to his family. We do know that IF he felt a reasonable fear for his family members, then it was a legal/good shoot.

The fact that the dog owner was violating a city ordnance has nothing to do with weather the shot was justified or not... but I think we can all agree that if she had been following the law and had that dog leashed, none of this would have happened.

I love dogs. I have a 100+ pound german shepherd. He is always gentle and has been socialized around other dogs and people since he was weaned. He doesn't go outside of the back yard without a leash. Why? Not because I expect him to attack someone... but rather because I know that if he DID attack someone, he could cause them serious harm. I understand this and believe it is my responsibility to be able to control him if that one in a million situation comes up. If someone disregards that responsibility with their animal, then I don't feel sorry for them if it threatens someone and has to be put down to prevent it from injuring someone.

[Elvis]

http://www.woai.com/news/local/story.as ... e34ba36c75

ABILENE, Texas (AP) -- A 7-year-old boy died after he was attacked by pit bulls while playing outside near his rural home, authorities said.

A driver saw Tanner Joshua Monk of Breckenridge lying next to a road near Hubbard Lake on Sunday with two pit bulls nearby and stopped to check on the child, Stephens County Sheriff Jim Reeves said. When she left her car, the dogs became aggressive and she called 911, he said.

The dogs also became aggressive toward the two deputies who arrived, and they shot and killed them. The deputies found that Tanner was dead, Reeves said in Monday's edition of the Abilene Reporter-News.

Tanner was found alone about 150 yards from his house and 50 to 75 yards from his neighbor's house where he had been playing with some friends, Reeves told The Associated Press on Monday. The two pit bulls, along with two others seized at the scene by law enforcement, belonged to those neighbors, Reeves said.

An autopsy will be performed on Tanner's body, and tests will be done on the dogs that were shot.

Reeves said no one has been arrested but that evidence probably will be presented to a grand jury following autopsies and tests. He said foul play is not suspected, although no one saw what happened on the road north of Breckenridge, about 55 miles northeast of Abilene.

"We're handling this like we would any unattended death," Reeves said.

He said it's too soon to say whether the parents face charges for leaving the child alone. Reeves said he called Child Protective Services, as required by law when a child dies. CPS is investigating the family, which had no prior history with the agency, for possible neglectful supervision, spokesman Paul Zimmerman said Monday.

It was the second serious pit bull attack on a child in four days in Texas.

On Wednesday in Fort Worth, a woman's two pit bulls attacked her 2-year-old niece as she was preparing to give the child a bath, police said. The little girl was critically injured, and her aunt also was injured as she lay over the child trying to protect her, police said.

Animal control officers later euthanized the dogs.

Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

[KD5NRH]

“I see those girls in the park every day around this time,” said Jody Caudle, a witness. “I come to the park on my lunch breaks to practice guitar and I see them. The same girls are always walking them without leashes and the dogs are always well-behaved[/color].”

Pretty much every dog attack has at least one "character witness" for the dog that says the same. It's usually true, too; the dog hasn't been a problem before or it would have been put down after its first attack.

Actually...no! The story (as written) clearly states that "witnesses" (plural) refuted his account. We are not told how many witnesses but it is plain that more people said the dogs were not a threat than the ONE officer who says they were.

Actually...no! The story says that the other witnesses didn't see the events prior to the shot being fired.

Why weren't the other dogs shot?

Probably because they backed off after the noise of the shot.

Did the officer attempt to put himself between his children and the dogs?

Chili's quick for his size, but unless he was pretty close, he's got no chance of outrunning a dog.

Did the officer consider the angle of the shot and what was beyond the dog?

Will you be asking a mugger to please step in front of a proper backstop the day you need your weapon? Considering the relative sizes of an adult male human and a pit/boxer mix, and the fact that the dogs came up from the creek, it was probably a pretty steep downward angle.

I haven't looked at the water level in a few day, but normal is anywhere from 5-12ft below the sidewalk, depending on whether it was upstream or downstream of the spillway. I'll try to fnd out where it happened, and get a photo or two for reference.

EDIT: the area described and pictured has a pretty steep drop to the water, and is just above the spillway, so the waer level there rarely has more than a foot of variation. The playground is about 100yds ENE, and judging from where everybody's looking in one of the photos, I'm guessing the shot would have been about 10-15deg below horizontal, in the direction of a fishing pier and an open field. If I'm up in time tomorrow I'll go get some much wider shots than the paper has.

[Elvis]

http://www.dogbitelaw.com/PAGES/statistics.html

In 2007, there were 32 fatal dog maulings in the USA.

[BigBlueDodge]

http://www.dogbitelaw.com/PAGES/statistics.html

In 2007, there were 32 fatal dog maulings in the USA.

Hmm, that would make dogs safer than humans.

[Elvis]

Just shoot the bad ones (both species).

[KD5NRH]

http://www.dogbitelaw.com/PAGES/statistics.html

In 2007, there were 32 fatal dog maulings in the USA.

You left out several equally pertinent stats on there:

Dog bites send nearly 368,000 victims to hospital emergency departments per year (1,008 per day). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Nonfatal Dog Bite–Related Injuries Treated in Hospital Emergency Departments — United States, 2001, MMWR 2003;52:605-610. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report is published by the CDC.

Also, some other numbers from CDC indicate that about 1.8% of those are hospitalized by the injuries, (as opposed to treated and released from the ER) which would suggest about 6,000 severe maulings per year. (There may be other contributing factors sending relatively minor bites for observation, but there are probably also some severe injuries that are treated and released from the ER for one reason or another.)

Getting bitten by a dog is the fifth most frequent cause of visits to emergency rooms caused by activities common among children. (See Weiss HB, Friedman DI, Coben JH. Incidence of dog bite injuries treated in emergency departments, JAMA 1998;279:53)

(far more common than gunshot injuries, I notice)

According to the Clifton study, pit bulls, Rottweilers, Presa Canarios and their mixes are responsible for 74% of attacks that were included in the study, 68% of the attacks upon children, 82% of the attacks upon adults, 65% of the deaths, and 68% of the maimings. In more than two-thirds of the cases included in the study, the life-threatening or fatal attack was apparently the first known dangerous behavior by the animal in question. Clifton states:

Dog attack victims in the US suffer over $1 billion in monetary losses every year. ("Take the bite out of man's best friend." State Farm Times, 1998;3(5):2.) That $1 billion estimate might be low -- an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that, in 1995, State Farm paid $70 million on 11,000 claims and estimated that the total annual insurance cost for dog bites was about $2 billion. (Voelker R. "Dog bites recognized as public health problem." JAMA 1997;277:278,280.)

All in all, if the Brady Center ever decided to change their focus to dogs, they wouldn't even have to make up numbers.

[Elvis]

I didn't leave anything out, just pointed everyone toward the research avaiable so they could make up their own mind about the threat from a dog.

[DoubleJ]

off-duty cop didn't have pepper spray on him??????
what a marooooon!
woulda solved the whole thing, AND then he coulda cited the lady for the leash violation without all the extra rigga-ma-roo.

[03Lightningrocks]

So he shot the dog. Big deal. It is a dog. Better that the dog is shot than the human is mauled. What kind of inconsiderate person allows their dogs to run free all over a park where children are playing. Should have shot the owner of the dog as well.

[KBCraig]

Statistically speaking, there was most likely only one person there that day with a gun. Isn't it odd, then, how the dogs weren't a threat to anyone except that person's kids?

http://www.politickermd.com/robtornoe/3 ... ges-police



I don't know if the shooting was justified. But I am certain that the official police response would be quite different if the shooter was Joe CHL, or Joe Unlicensed. Justification is justification regardless of the shooter's legal status, but you can bet the official response would be different.

[KD5NRH]

Statistically speaking, there was most likely only one person there that day with a gun. Isn't it odd, then, how the dogs weren't a threat to anyone except that person's kids?

Well, let's see; for the two years available on the DPS website, (06 and 07) Erath county had 150 and 185 applications approved. That gives an average of 167.5 new CHLs or renewals in the county per year. Since it's a 5 year license, that would mean 837.5 active licenses in the county is a reasonable assumption. The county's population is estimated at 34,289, which makes the probability of any given resident having a CHL about 2.4%, or 1 in 40. It's a big park, so 40 (if Chili has a CHL, which I don't know) or 80 (if he does) isn't much of a crowd. These numbers, of course, don't account for legally car carried guns or other other on-or-off-duty law enforcement officers, so statistically speaking, it's pretty likely that he was not the only person in the park with a gun that day.
*EDIT TO ADD: according to some statistics, 24.6% of that number are under 18. That would make it closer to 1 in 30 for adults. I can't find counts of 18-21, veterans under 21, or prohibited persons to narrow it down to eligible adults.*

Another bit of the story that a coworker pointed out:

Reyes claimed the dog was not attacking, but playing, and turned back to her when she called its name. According to Reyes, when the dog got close to the kids, Alexander pulled out his gun and fired.

According to Stephenville Police Chief Roy Halsell, the gunshot hit the dog in the front of the head.

How did it get close to the kids if it had already turned away, and how was it hit in the front of the head?

[Excaliber]

Statistically speaking, there was most likely only one person there that day with a gun. Isn't it odd, then, how the dogs weren't a threat to anyone except that person's kids?

Statistics are meaningless when it comes to individual victimization by man or beast - you either are targeted or you're not. In either case, for any given incident, the statistic is 100% for you.

[flintknapper]

TxRVer wrote:

I don't know what happened there. I just know that if the dog had been on a leash, under control, nothing would have happened.

I agree...and have said repeatedly that the dogs should have been leashed, this is a clear violation of a city ordinance (a point to plain to require any argument).

I have to believe the guy feared for the safety of his kids.

We would all like to think this. The question is: Was that "belief" a "reasonable" one (based on the immediate circumstance), or was it the reaction of person acting on preconceived ideas about a certain breed of dog?

As far as witness accounts, I copied this from the article. "None of the witnesses, however, said they saw the events leading up to the incident."

Several witnesses saw the dogs (and their disposition) prior to the alleged threat. What they didn't see was the actual shooting or the dogs behavior several seconds before the alleged threat.

All other witness accounts don't matter. The dogs may have been friendly at every other time.

I disagree. The fact that the girls are purported to have taken these same dogs (daily by one account) to the park with no incidents...is rather telling IMO. ANY animal (or humans for that matter) are "capable" doing things that are unpredictable, I certainly understand that. However, the past conduct/actions of both animals and humans is exactly what we base our trust or distrust on. I remain unconvinced this was a necessary shooting.

No one else saw what happened when he said his kids were attacked.

The children were not "attacked". The allegation is that the officer believed they were about to be (which is good enough for me) if true.

I don't know who's telling the truth but why would he shoot a dog in the park if it wasn't attacking his kids.

Again the kids were NOT attacked, only perceived to be threatened. So again, my question is: Was this a reasonable perception? Does the officer harbor a fear of pit-bulls? Many LEO are known to have a disdain for the breed, not necessarily from any bad experience with them.

Questions:

Alexander said the dog ran up to his children growling and snarling. He told officers he warned Reyes three times to get the dog away from his sons.

If the dog "ran up growling and snarling" then why didn't it continue its "attack"?

A whole park full of people failed to notice a pit-bull "growling and snarling" at a small child?
The officer had time to "warn" the owner "three times" to get the dogs away from his sons, but didn't move between them and the dogs? Are we to believe that the owner of the dogs simply "ignored" the warnings of the officer, or did she not see the incident as threatening (because it was not)?

"The dog had my kids pinned against the fence,” Alexander said. “I thought he was going to attack my sons and I did what I thought would keep them safe.”

According to Stephenville Police Chief Roy Halsell, the gunshot hit the dog in the front of the head.

If the dog had his "kids pinned against the fence" then how did the officer shoot it in the front of the head?

By necessity the officer would have had to have been between the children and the dog (suggesting the threat was not as eminent as portrayed) or....the dog looked the officer's way (meaning he took a shot very close to his own children), or......the animal wasn't as close as submitted and the officer was able to maneuver into a decent shooting position (a much more plausible explanation).


I don't know, I wasn't there. It just leaves me with questions.

[flintknapper]

http://www.dogbitelaw.com/PAGES/statistics.html

In 2007, there were 32 fatal dog maulings in the USA.

From a population of untold millions of dogs.