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Crime scene (courtesy 10tv.com)

“Gary Parsley says the shooting that happened on Chandler Drive in Whitehall, Friday afternoon, happened in an instant,” w10tv.com reports. “’Everything happened really fast,’ he said. Parsley says a Columbus Police Officer came to his house to follow up on a hit-and-skip case Parsley says he was a victim of two weeks ago. He says when the officer stepped outside – a woman, two houses down, came running out and pleading for help. ‘She was wanting medical attention for her sister,’ Parsley said. ‘That’s why she called the guy over there.’ Parsley went back inside his house. A few seconds later he heard the gunshot.” Mercy killing? Not even close . . .

According to CPD, when the officer approached the house the family’s dog charged him.

“The officer fires one shot at the dog, misses the dog and accidentally shoots a four-year-old in the leg,” CPD spokeswoman, Denise Alex-Bouzounis, said.

There’s a reason for Rule Four – know your target and what’s beyond it. To prevent people from shooting something they didn’t intend to shoot. Ah, but did the unnamed police officer need to shoot Fido? As you might imagine, that’s a source of some debate.

“They brought the girl out,” he said. “She wasn’t on a stretcher. One of the paramedics was carrying her. She had a blanket around her and there was a little bit of blood on the blanket, but she seemed to be conscious. Her head was poking around [and] she wasn’t, like, screaming or crying that I could tell.”

Parsley doesn’t understand why the officer felt the need to shoot in the first place.

“[The officer] was a big guy and they have tasers and clubs and stuff,” he said. “I don’t know why you would raise a gun. I really don’t agree with him just pulling his gun out and trying to shoot the dog.”

According to Alex-Bouzounis, when asked about the breed of the dog, she says it was a mutt and would not specify on its size.

If the canine in question’s the size of a miniature schnauzer, Officer Shielded from Responsibility Unlike Any Other Civilian Gun Owner is gonna be in a lot of trouble. Or not. But in this house, for sure.

Anyway, the story makes no further mention of the person who originally needed medical assistance. At the risk of seeming insensitive, I wonder if they got a two-for-one deal on the meat wagon. [h/t JW]

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39 COMMENTS

  1. AN INTERNAL INVESTIGATION HAS FOUND NO EVIDENCE OF WRONGDOING. I’m not clairvoyant, but I just have a hunch…

  2. Good thing he was one of the two kinds of people who should be allowed to carry firearms.
    Something bad could’ve happened.

    • Grabbers will call this “another child hurt by gun violence”, cops will blame the gun not having a safety, Justice Brothers won’t care they’re too busy in Charleston. Next time they’ll just send SWAT.

  3. Shot a kid? Tried to kill a dog and a kid? What!? Sadly, across the U.S. is a job well done for police. I bet he gets in trouble for not double tapping.

  4. I was ambulatory and a co worker was on a gurney. We road in the same meat wagon and the workman’s comp got billed for 2 full rides. Probably sop amongst ambulance companies.

  5. Called upon to help,and ends up trying to kill their dog, but manages to screw even that up, and shoots an infant instead. Par for the course, these days of the complete cowards in blue. Whatever happened to the days when police were supposed to show at least a tiny bit of courage and sense? I guess its now long gone, with the forced wimpification of everybody at the govt skools. Too bad, because I’m old enough to remember the days when things were a lot more sensible, and more fun, and just better all the way around. Guess they just cant wait for my generation to die out so they can all pretend this kind of bullsh*t is completely normal.

  6. Oh, hell, another Shannon Watts “child shooting victim”. No doubt to be used as an excuse for taking guns away from everyone but the cops…

  7. Live in Columbus area and am ashamed of the police performance. Of course channel 6 news lead with police charged by dog forced to shoot. I am very pro-police in the abstract but the current performance of many officers is uncons

  8. If he drew down on fido because he felt threatened and “failed” then he obviously was not threatened and this should be a criminal offense for hitting an innocent!
    However if had continued to shoot and killed said dog he would be off the hook, more or less, BUT because he stopped shooting after hitting innocent he has place himself in jeopardy. ..just thinking out loud, what say you?

    • Has People for The Ethical Treatment of Animals ever physically protested these shootings? Does Shannon Watts and her crowd ever comment on these cases, at least from a gun safety issue?

      Has Bloomberg or Watts ever blamed the gun instead of the officer in a case like this? He and she seem to give the Government representative a pass on this type of shooting.

  9. Hmm… I’m pretty sure the whole “have to shoot the dog to prevent it from causing injury,” if it were the case, still wouldn’t excuse shooting a kid in the process. Probably should have just let the paramedics handle it…

    • But he MISSED the dog, and hit a toddler instead. Then, after not following rule four, know your target AND whats behind it, the dog, which he did NOT shoot, proceedex to attack no one and do no damage to anyone after the shot missed. So the dog was no threat in the first place.
      Arent we lucky that the courts have found that for an officer shooting to be justified, the officer only needed to FEEL threatened, and not actually BE threatened? Of course this ignores the fact that woosie little cowards FEEL threatened at ALL TIMES, but hey, they can address that little issue at some other time… like later… much, much later…

      • Yet somehow The mailman continues to deliver unarmed and unharmed by dogs. Well there’s one thing the Federal Government does right. Not the mail part but the not killing dogs part.

      • The courts have found that an officer- or anyone, for that matter- in such a scenario needs to believe there is a reasonable threat. Both of the words are important.

    • Love the picture – policing in the new millennium. Looks like Chicago PD hat.

      Yet another reason to never get LE involved unless there is no choice. You are better off dealing with whatever is going on yourself. Especially if you are a dog owner. Or have children. Or just don’t want to be shot because Officer Friendly “felt threatened”.

  10. The child inserted herself into the path of the hero’s bullets that were destined for a hero-killing dog. Obstruction of justice, toss her in a cage.

  11. Blah, blah, blah…the police will investigate the police and find that the police were justified in their policing policies.

    What can I say? Pigs gonna pig.

  12. And yet, only police and military should have guns, that nobody wants to take from us. Bet the opposition ignores this one.

  13. So, he missed the “imminent threat” and the “imminent threat” didn’t do anything bad? So, uh, was it actually an imminent threat?

    They just like to whip it out and try to kill stuff.

    The police will investigate themselves and find that they didn’t do anything wrong. No need to watch the watchers, they watch themselves. For the Children.

    Have you ever met a dog that doesn’t wag it’s tail, bark, and jump up on you to lick you face off? This is “charging” in the mind of all the trigger happy anaerobic cops…

    Maybe the macho body language Cops use to deliberately antagonize a simple animal for the sick joy of killing it when it defends it’s owner from the Cop’s assault… Even a Shi Tzu will attack if ypu attack first…

  14. I can be upset with the cop for shooting and missing and hitting the little girl, but dogs can be very dangerous (and lethal) and if they are aggressive, they deserve to be shot.

    When I lived in Michigan last year there was a runner mauled to death by a pack that had escaped from their yard. And back on the farm, it was SOP to shoot any dogs seen running together. Even the owners were okay with it, because they knew it was dangerous.

    • I question how “aggressive” this dog was, since he missed it and apparently didn’t shoot again. So the dog was still alive and unhurt, and somehow nobody got mauled. Doesn’t sound like a rabid feral attack dog to me.

    • Your logic is so flawed it reeks of basement dwelling keyboard commando-ism. First you moved the goalpost with a change from A DOG to dogs plural then used that as justification for the gross over-broad generalization that that all aggressive dogs should be shot (which would immediately cause the execution of most police and military dogs). You follow that up with an argument from personal experience fallacy which has its foundation built on the same false equivalence fallacy that you used at the beginning. The last sentence is completely irrelevant and forms the basis of a poorly constructed false equivalence fallacy comparing your farm to Columbus, OH which is definitely a city and not a farm and I suspect the bit about shooting dogs in groups is either a partial or complete fabrication. There is no cause to shoot a dog because it’s grumpy at seeing you or because it’s running with a friend. If it were mauling the 4 year old girl shooting it would be easily justifiable. Shooting a dog because it runs out and takes an aggressive stance while barking or runs across your pasture with another dog or even if it bites your leg is not.

  15. I like many cops. I have a state trooper for a friend. I generally support what they do.

    That said, this should have been a defensive gun use situation. Take away the uniform and all you have is a madman shooting at children.

    I’d return fire, uniform or no.

  16. Because apparently cops can’t see a dog without turning into quivering masses of chicken shit and needing to shoot it because you know, it might bite you and that’ll hurt a little bit. When did so many cops become such cowards?

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