A High Point, N. family says the police shot and killed the wrong dog just for barking.
Around 9:50 am on July 9th, the High Point PD responded to a home on the 1500 block of Homewood Ave. A woman had called to complain about a German Shepherd in her yard that was refusing to leave.
She claimed she was afraid to let her dogs and kids out. The officer saw the dog but wasn’t able to get close without the dog running away. That’s when someone claimed they knew where the owners of the dog lived.
Parking his marked patrol car at the end of the driveway, the officer approached when a Black Lab named Hank came out from behind Adam Barnes’ home.
In a statement the department claimed, “A black dog came out from behind the home, barking aggressively, and charged at the officer. The officer backed up as the dog continued to charge and shot the dog four times. The dog was about 5-7 feet away from the officer when it was shot.”
Barnes, on the other hand, contends the officer “shot my black Lab for no reason. First off, I don’t have a German Shepherd… Pow pow, pow pow! Just like that. Before I could get down here, the dog was dead. It died that quick. I told the guy, ‘What are you doing? You just killed my son’s pet.’ I said, ‘He’s going to be devastated.’ I dropped to my knees, and I just didn’t know what to do. I was broken at that point. I couldn’t bring him back.”
'Shot my black lab for no reason': High Point police shoot, kill 'wrong' dog, family says https://t.co/PmzDEfNrdM
— WXII 12 News (@WXII) July 10, 2023
So far, the department has acknowledged the dog was shot but has come up short on saying why the dog was shot or identifying the officer responsible. As they have already admitted the officer knew the dog he was looking for, he easily could have ascertained that this Black Lab was not the German Shepherd he was after.
This is just sloppy police work. Period.
