JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A heavy police presence was blocking off parts of College Road in the Riverside area of Jacksonville Friday afternoon. The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office has now confirmed the incident involved an officer who shot a dog while responding to a call.
JSO was responding to a call that came in at 2:30 p.m. The caller was a woman who reported she was involved in an altercation with another woman and she was armed.
One of the women was a veteran with a PTSD service dog, who police say was a 10-year-old German Shepherd. When officers were detaining the two women, the dog bit the responding officer, according to JSO.
The officer shot the dog several times. The owner was grazed by a "fragment" which police say may have been a bullet. The fragment was small enough that it did not have to be removed.
JSO says the dog is expected to survive.
What happened?
JSO said the dispute they were responding to resulted from a misunderstanding between the veteran and another woman. Earlier in the week, the veteran's husband's car was broken into and several items were stolen, including a "sentimental" backpack.
Some of the stolen items had been found on the railroad tracks on College Road, which is why the veteran was on the tracks, along with her four-year-old child and the dog.
As she was searching, the veteran came across a bicycle. JSO says the other woman mistakenly thought she was "doing something to the bicycle," and that's when the argument began. Police say the argument and the two women pushed each other.
The veteran informed the other woman she was armed and called 911. Police responded to the scene to deescalate the argument. This is when the dog bit the officer.
Police say the officer was bitten in the left thigh and he will recover.