Bay Shore Family Demands Investigation After Dog Shot By Police Officer
BAY SHORE, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) -- A Long Island couple is demanding an investigation after their dog was shot in the face by a Suffolk County police officer.
Darell Baldwin said his 9-year-old dog, named Black, was in the fenced-in backyard of their Bay Shore home Sunday playing with a ball in the snow when he heard a pop.
The screen door was open and Black came running inside, bleeding.
"Blood was shooting out of her face, I had to grab her and hold her," Baldwin said.
"My house looked like a crime scene," Baldwin's fiancée, Sarah Lightsey, said. "Blood on the doors, all over the floor, on my couch, on blankets, on clothes. Whatever you could imagine, there was blood."
Baldwin said he ran outside and found a female police officer in the yard who told him, "Your dog attacked me, I had to let off a round."
"I said what do you mean? You shot my dog," Baldwin said.
Suffolk County Police said the officer was responding to an anonymous 911 call about a dog tied to a tree, barking in the frigid cold. But when the officer arrived at the scene, the dog was not tied up and began charging at the officer, police said.
Baldwin and Lightsey are demanding an investigation and at the very least the dog's vet bills paid.
"I'm angry because they lied, because they said my dog was tied to a tree, I don't have any trees in my backyard," Lightsey said.
Black had to undergo surgery to have a bullet removed from her jaw.
The dog remains in an animal hospital recovering, but will require more surgery.
"She needs a wire put in her jaw, she has to have all her back teeth on her left side removed and that's going to cost about another $6,000," Lightsey said, adding that she just wants her dog back home. "My house is so quiet without her, my house feels broken."
Suffolk police said the investigation is continuing, adding there is no standard operating procedure or policy which covers the wide variety of situations to which police respond.