These kinds of stories are so unpleasant and unfortunate, but we have to share them so more people become aware of what’s going on…
Sunday morning wasn’t the first time that Keith Outlaw’s two Staffordshire bull terriers had escaped from their Wyandanch yard.But this time, the dogs didn’t come back.
As Outlaw and his 15-year-old daughter drove through the neighborhood looking for them, Outlaw said he heard gunshots. It turned out to be Suffolk police, who had just shot and killed both animals.
Outlaw, 52, said he knows the dogs shouldn’t have escaped from his yard, but he said 3-year-old Onyx and Dutchess, who was a year and a half, were gentle giants who never hurt anyone.
Police painted a different picture.
A police representative said officers who were driving through the Wyandanch neighborhood saw the two animals, which look like pit bulls, chasing a group of children as young as 5. The children got away, and the officers cornered the dogs in a fenced yard on 19th Street, the representative said.
They closed the gate, trapping the dogs inside, and called animal control officers. But as they waited for animal control, the homeowner — an elderly deaf man — stepped out of his house.
“The officers were yelling at him to go back in the house, but he couldn’t hear them because he was deaf,” the representative said.
When the dogs charged at the man, the representative said, the officers shot and killed both dogs.
The representative did not know how many bullets were fired, nor how many officers did the shooting, and could not provide information about departmental policy in such situations.
The resident of the 19th Street home could not be reached for comment.
After the shooting, Outlaw said he walked up to the police and asked whether they had seen his dogs.
“I said, ‘Did you see two brown dogs? Please tell me you guys didn’t just shoot my dogs,’ ” Outlaw said. Then he saw the dogs’ bodies — one in the bushes, the other on the side of the house.
“They never fight,” he said. “These dogs have never been in a scrap with another dog.”
Outlaw said he is grateful that at least he is left with the pair’s nine puppies, which are just old enough to have been weaned.
Source: Newsday.com
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