A Sturgeon, Mo., officer shot and killed a blind and deaf dog after it wandered into a neighbor’s yard, according to body-camera footage published by ABC affiliate 17 News.
The unidentified officer shot the dog within a couple of minutes of arriving on the scene, after an unidentified homeowner called the city to report spotting a dog in her yard on Sunday, May 19, per HuffPost.
The city shared a post on Facebook on May 19, saying that the dog appeared to be in “need of medical attention.”
The dog was a Shih Tzu named Teddy, according to his owner Nicholas Hunter, who spoke to HuffPost. Hunter can be heard on the footage, which was viewed by PEOPLE, telling the officer his dog was “completely deaf and completely blind.”
The unidentified homeowner told HuffPost she called the city in the hopes that officials help the missing dog or reunite him with his owner.
“I am sorry this happened. I’m not happy I had to shoot a dog,” the officer told Hunter in their conversation caught on the footage. He also told Hunter that the city didn’t have a humane society for missing dogs.
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“The dog drank water from a bowl I provided and licked my arm and leg. He was in no way a threat,” the woman, who feared retaliation if she shared her name, told HuffPost.
On Thursday, May 23, the city of Sturgeon released an updated statement about the shooting incident on Facebook.
“The City has reviewed the dispatch report and body camera footage regarding the recent dog at large incident,” the statement began. “The City believes that the officer acted within his authority based on the information available to him at the time to protect against possible injury to citizens from what appeared to be an injured, sick, and abandoned dog.”
The statement continued on, noting that the woman who reported the dog missing told officials the dog wasn’t “in her view dangerous.”
“The dog’s strange behavior appeared consistent with the dispatch report of an injured or possibly sick dog,” the statement continued, before concluding by assuring the public that officers would be sent for better training on how to handle missing dogs as a result of Teddy’s death.
“I’m at a loss. It still hasn’t kicked in, the reality of it,” Hunter told HuffPost regarding Teddy’s death.