A Missouri police officer gunned down a beloved deaf and blind dog Sunday, first claiming he was putting it out of its misery before backtracking and saying the 13-pound pup made him fear for his life.
The disturbing killing was captured in the cop’s bodycam footage — and happened just three minutes after the officer arrived to find the escaped dog exploring a neighbor’s yard.
“If you watch the video, the dog is very playful and happy and kind of turned his head when he noticed somebody’s there, looking for somebody to touch him as he’s always done,” grieving owner Nicolas Hunter told The Post Friday night.
“His demeanor in the whole video is non-aggressive. Never brandishes his teeth, never barks or growls or makes any attempt to bite … Zero aggression, which I expect with Teddy, that’s how he’s always been.”
Hunter is planning on suing the city of Sturgeon, which has staunchly defended its officer’s actions in the days since the shooting — sparking outrage in the 900-person city.
He was eating dinner with friends in Columbia when he received a call from a friend around 5 p.m. that little Teddy, his 5-year-old white Shih Tzu mix, was being reported on a local Facebook group as an escaped pup wandering on a neighbor’s lawn.
Hunter immediately began the 25-minute drive back to his home to retrieve the lost dog, but didn’t even make it halfway through before his friend called back bearing horrific news.
“That was very shocking, and it was rough to hear. At first, I was just kind of like ‘No, it must be somebody else’s dog, it must be a mistake.’ But then I called the police station and later found out that it was my dog that was shot and killed,” Hunter recalled.
When the grieving owner arrived at the scene, the cop admitted that Teddy hadn’t posed a threat, but explained that he thought the pup was a stray and appeared sick, video obtained by ABC17 shows.
Hunter then incredulously asks, “So you’re putting them [the dog] out of its misery?” with the officer shockingly replying, “What am I supposed to do, we don’t have freaking animal control?”
To add insult to injury, the cop then slapped Hunter with a Dog At Large citation, he said.
The city of Sturgeon has staunchly defended its officer for killing the tiny dog, claiming Thursday that Teddy’s “strange behavior appeared consistent with the dispatch report of an injured or possibly sick dog.”
The appalling bodycam footage, however, tells a different story.
Answering a Dog At Large call, the cop is seen attempting to wrangle little Teddy using a catch pole, but the teeny canine continuously evades capture.
Teddy, who was born deaf and went blind two years ago, had slipped out of his outdoor kennel after Hunter’s second dog, Gizmo, dug a hole under the fence. Teddy’s collar caught on the links and stayed behind while the pup sniffed around a neighbor’s yard, located just one block away.
“The only time that the dog ever does any kind of movements is when the officer puts the collar around his neck, to which point he just takes his head and moves it and then goes on about what he was doing: just walking — not running — just walking. Trotting along,” Hunter said.
Witnesses corroborated Hunter’s claims, with the woman who called police regarding the found pooch writing a letter to the city making it clear that they did not believe the dog was a threat to the community.
After three minutes after trying to wrangle the canine, the officer fired two shots — as a 17-year-old neighbor looked on, witnesses said.
Although the officer admitted to Hunter that he wasn’t afraid of the pooch, the city of Sturgeon later put out a statement claiming the cop was acting out of fear for his life.
“Believing the dog to be severely injured or infected with rabies, and as the officer feared being bitten and being infected with rabies, the SPD officer felt that his only option was to put the animal down,” said the statement, released on Facebook to hundreds of upset comments.
Days later, the city issued another statement, emphasizing that the “officer acted within his authority based on the information available to him at the time to protect against possible injury to citizens from what appeared to be an injured, sick, and abandoned dog.”
The second statement, notably, no longer made mention of the rabies. The police department did not respond to requests for further comment.
Hunter believes the continuous slip-ups are an attempt to “cover up the mistakes that were made.”
“It was very extreme. The levels of force that he used is mind-blowing,” he said.
The trauma of the incident has only been exacerbated by the city’s deflection, and its refusal to answer any of his calls, Hunter said, adding that he exhumed poor Teddy’s body to prove that he was not positive for rabies.
Now, Hunter is planning on suing the city, claiming that the officer acted inappropriately and that the situation has caused him and his family emotional distress, all while grieving his beloved pet.
“He was always a very energetic dog. always full of life. I mean, he loved interacting with people and any kind of animal he was just always curious. At the first sign of someone or something, his tail would just start moving as fast as possible and he would jump up and down in excitement,” Hunter said.
“When that would happen, he would just move his head frantically just to lick the person that was petting him. Teddy has never bit or been aggressive to any person or animal.”
