By Jonathan Wolfe, Tue, October
07, 2014
An Illinois mother is furious
after police shot her dog right in front of her children last week. Mother Gina
Marie Stone says her two young children were outside with the dog when it was
shot.
“When I was putting my
daughter’s clothes away, I heard a noise,” she told NBC Chicago.
Her children, ages four and
five, came in screaming about what they just saw.
“The kids came in running like
‘The cops shot Rayleigh, they killed Rayleigh,’” she recalled.
Rayleigh survived the shooting,
but Stone’s grievance with the Berkley, Illinois, police department isn’t over.
She doesn’t understand why officers felt the need to shoot her dog, especially
in front of her kids. One neighbor who witnessed the event doesn’t understand
why police shot with kids around, either.
“What startled me even more is
that these babies were right there by the cops,” Wanda Williams said.
Berkley police Sgt. Justin
Patti says officers went to the neighborhood in response to an aggressive dog
report.
“It was reported by one of the
callers that called our station that [the children] were using conduit pipe
sticks, chasing after the dog and hitting it,” Patti told NBC Chicago. “The dog
actually became aggressive towards the officer, lunged at him, got within close
proximity and the officer had to protect himself.”
Stone feels particularly
insulted by the department’s decision to cite her after shooting her dog. After
Stone rushed Rayleigh to the veterinary hospital, she was informed by police
that she was being ticketed for having a “vicious dog at large without tags.”
