Brooklyn Park Police Fatally Shoot Dog After Attack on Child, Officers
A dog attack in Brooklyn Park sent a 9-year-old girl to the hospital with bite injuries to her head. Meanwhile, police say they had to resort to extreme measures to subdue the animal.
“They are animals. They don’t understand the world as we do,” said Inspector Elliot Faust of the Brooklyn Park Police Department.
Faust says that on Friday afternoon in the 8100 block of Aster Drive N. in Brooklyn Park, the girl was attacked by the family dog in her back yard.
“Animals do things instinctively,” Faust said. “When you mix children with animals, strange things can happen.”
Brooklyn Park police say they received a call Friday afternoon that a pit bull was attacking a child.
“The dog wasn’t running loose, the dog attack happened at the residence where the dog belonged,” Faust said. “It was in a fenced-in back yard, so the child and the dog were part of the same household.”
The incident happened in a home on the 8100 block of Aster Drive N. in Brooklyn Park.
Faust says a neighbor heard the girl screaming and went to the house to help. When police arrived on scene, they found the neighbor trying to fend the dog off with a stick.
“Unfortunately, the dog had already attacked the child, bitten her repeatedly,” Faust said.
Faust says the officer then got between the dog and the child to help prevent further harm, but the dog didn’t back down, prompting the officer to use lethal force.
“Shooting a dog is the last thing a police officer wants to do,” Faust said. “I can tell you, after I watched the video, the officer did not resort to that immediately. It was a last resort. As the dog continued to walk the officer down, there was nowhere to retreat. He had already retreated. He was maintaining a barrier between the child who was behind him and the dog kept walking him down, and really there was no choice at that point in time.”
Meanwhile, Faust says the child suffered significant injuries and was transported to the hospital, but is expected to recover.
The officer who fired the fatal shot is now back to work.
“He was distraught over the incident,” Faust said. “It’s the last thing that any one of us wants to have to do.”
Faust says a detective has been assigned to the case, but he doesn’t believe any charges will come from the incident.
Related: Crystal Police: Officer Fatally Shoots Dog to Escape Serious Injury
