GILROY
– A rottweiler’s angry owner says he plans to sue the city over
the killing of his wandering dog by a city police officer Tuesday
morning. The officer said he shot the 150-pound dog after it
charged him. The owner thinks the officer used much more force than
was necessary.
GILROY – A rottweiler’s angry owner says he plans to sue the city over the killing of his wandering dog by a city police officer Tuesday morning. The officer said he shot the 150-pound dog after it charged him. The owner thinks the officer used much more force than was necessary.
Mark Oliveira’s family owned the 3-year-old male rottweiler, named Schwartz, and a female rottweiler it escaped with. Neither dog had ever even shown its teeth to anyone before, he said.
“They had not one drop of violence in them,” Oliveira said.
Police and the man who reported the dog dispute this, saying the rottweiler was aggressively trying to barricade the man in his house.
Oliveira said the police officer should have used mace on the dog instead of shooting it or waited for a professional animal-control officer to show up.
“You don’t just open fire and kill someone’s dog,” he said.
Police are the animal-control officers in Gilroy; certain officers receive specific training in animal control and pass this on to the others, according to Sgt. Kurt Ashley. It was unknown how much animal-control training the officer in this case had been exposed to.
Police are investigating the incident further, but Sgt. Noel Provost said, “Knowing what I know, the officer was well within policy and procedure.”
The dog was six blocks away from home when it was shot.
The two rottweilers escaped their 1020 Third St. yard through a hole in the fence, Oliveira said. They were four and a half blocks from home when a man reported them to police at about 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, saying they were in his front yard at 7570 Westwood Drive.
“The reporting party said that the dogs would not let him leave his home,” the officer who shot the dog wrote in his report. “The reporting party said the dogs had run off but that they would charge if I approached them.”
“These particular dogs were particularly aggressive,” said police Sgt. John Sheedy, who was on duty with the officer in question that morning. “The reporting party originally on this happened to be a Santa Clara County DA’s investigator who drew his service weapon, thinking he was going to have to shoot the dogs before they backed off and allowed him to get back into his house”
Two officers responded to the scene, but the dogs were no longer there. Searching the neighborhood on his own, one officer located the dogs in front of 7551 Kentwood Court. According to his report, both dogs came toward him, barking aggressively, as he got out of his car. The female soon backed off, but the male came closer and didn’t show any indication of letting up. When it was about 20 feet from the officer, the officer drew his handgun. The dog immediately charged him, he reported, and he shot it in the chest. It turned and went toward the house next door. It was found dead a few moments later in front of 7541 Kentwood.
Police reported no witnesses to the dog’s killing, other than the officer.
Nancy Valencia, who lives next door to where Schwartz was found dead, said she wasn’t home at the time but had problems with stray rottweilers in her neighborhood once before.
“Last year, two rottweilers cornered me in my yard,” Valencia said. “Luckily, I had a hoe. … I had a hard time with them.”
The neighborhood’s mailman, Edwin Natividad, who has reason to know the whereabouts of aggressive dogs, said he didn’t know of any vicious dogs in that neighborhood.
The neighbors who made the original complaint at 7570 Westwood could not be reached for comment by The Dispatch. They have two dogs in their backyard, which may have been a factor in the rottweilers’ selection of their home to hang out by.
Oliveira said he thinks his female rottweiler is pregnant and that Schwartz might have barked in her defense. He’s sure his dogs would have done no more than bark, however.
“The dogs weren’t hurting anybody,” he said. “(Schwartz) could have been scared, but he’s never been vicious.”
Oliveira said he understood why the policeman might have been afraid.
“Most dogs don’t like uniformed people like police and mailmen; it’s a thing with dogs,” Oliveira said. “(Schwartz) weighs 150 pounds. If he was barking at me, I’d probably be scared, too.”
Even if the officer decided the dog was too dangerous to live, Oliveira said, he should have shot it in the head instead of the chest so as to let it die without suffering.
Oliveira said he thinks the officer who shot his dog is a “rookie.” He thinks a veteran officer would have handled the situation differently. As of press time, police declined to state the officer’s name or how long he’d been on the force.
Police pointed out that Oliveira is responsible by law for keeping his dogs contained.
