[
Eddie Huang]
All sorts of reports coming in. Per
NBC:
Officers were responding to a call to check on a man who appeared to be passed out on a sidewalk at 14th Street and 2nd Avenue Monday afternoon, police said. A dog near the man, who was possibly homeless, began attacking the officers.
That's when police opened fire on the dog, killing it.
[Via
@robbyohara]
[Via
@robbyohara]
Gothamist has more
here ... including a statement by the NYPD ...
An NYPD spokesman confirmed that officers shot and killed a dog at the location at approximately 4:25 p.m. The spokesman could not comment on why officers opened fire.
An East Village resident who witnessed the shooting says that the four officers who responded to the scene in front of the KFC at first were "not aggressive" towards the man or the dog. "The dog was barking very loudly, as though it were protecting its turf," the witness said
And here's
a report via the
Observer... they interview Eddie Huang, the chef-owner of nearby Baohaus...
Everyone around was like: Put the dog out of its misery. The cops left this dog wiggling and flaying, blood coming out of its mouth. They shot it in front of a public bus.
You can see in the photo, the trail of blood. The dog traveled. People were really really vocal, harassing the cops to put the dog down, and they wouldn’t do it. The whole thing just seemed really, really unnecessary. I don’t know what the protocol is for this, I know they have to keep the peace, but it really seemed like an abuse of power, an unnecessary one, and not doing it the right way.
According to
NY1, authorities said the dog "snapped at a pedestrian and an officer."
"He was protecting the owner, like what animals do. He doesn't know any better, he's a dog," said one witness. "They could have handled it differently, rather than shooting the dog. The dog was twitching and rolling around."
"I talked to the cop afterwards. He was very shaken up. He's a dog lover and it ruined his week if not his year," said another witness. "And he did what he had to do to protect himself."
DNAinfo reported that the dog belong to a 29-year-old man from Poland... and that he "epilepsy, and had frequent seizures."
UPDATED 10:11 p.m.
The early reports said that the police killed the dog. Not so.
According to the
Daily News: "Police said the dog survived and was being cared for at an East Harlem shelter. The unidentified homeless man and the shooting officer were taken to Bellevue Hospital for minor injuries."
And here's a photo from the
News ...
The
Post notes that the dog's name is Star.
