Woman Ticketed After Police Shoot Her Dog


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.”