PANAMA CITY — The owner of a dog a police officer shot last week said his dog has never attacked anyone and police overreacted.
Jacob Creighton suggested Friday his dogs were the victims in a case of mistaken identity when they were shot on the porch of their Cove home on Bonita Avenue. Before Creighton’s brother moved out, his two dogs were known to be aggressive, he said.
But Lilith and Amelia, two bulldogs that belong to Creighton and his mother, respectively, aren’t troublemakers, he said. Though Creighton was not there when Lilith and Amelia were shot, he said if the animals felt cornered, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for them to have responded aggressively.
“I don’t want people to think my dog and my mother’s dog are vicious animals, because they’re not,” Creighton said.
Creighton brought Lilith to the vet Friday after a Panama City police officer shot both dogs the morning of March 20. The officer’s report indicates Amelia lunged at him before he opened fire. The officer also reported he recognized the dogs from previous calls.
Creighton said he believed the officer mistook his dogs for his brother’s dogs.
The News Herald’s calls to the police department for comment were not returned.
“My dog might die because they shot first and asked questions later,” Creighton said last week. After a visit to the vet later the same day, Crieghton learned Lilith would most likely survive.
But neighbors said the dogs were behaving aggressively March 20. When a friend arrived at June Miller’s house and told her she had just scared off two dogs that had surrounded her 9-year-old son down the block as he rode his bike to school, Miller and her husband went to investigate. They found Lilith and Amelia wandering unsupervised, and they became very aggressive toward her husband, Miller said Friday.
Miller’s husband sent her inside to call 911 while he grabbed a baseball bat. The cops arrived quickly, she said. She crouched on her front porch and tried to see what was happening, but she only could hear it.
“I heard him holler,” Miller said of the officer. “I heard him yell to the other neighbors, ‘Get inside your house; get in your house right now.’ ”
Then she heard gunshots.
“I hate that their dog got shot, but it’s an animal; animals can be replaced,” Miller said. “My child has one life.”
Neighbor Torie Dunklin saw the shooting. She said she saw the officer standing at the door when the dogs came up to him on either side. One of the dogs was behaving very aggressively, and she heard the officer yell at the dogs.
“Then he pulled out his gun and told them to get back again, and then he shot both dogs,” Dunklin said.
Dunklin said she never has had a problem with Amelia and Lilith; in fact, she’d never seen them. She said she thought the officer might have had an opportunity to use pepper spray to defend himself, but given the circumstance,s she said she thought his response was reasonable.
Creighton said Lilith’s leg was amputated the day after she was shot. The bullet was too close to major arteries to remove it, but Creighton said the vet told him Lilith would most likely survive.