Video: Cop Shoots ‘Aggressive’ 6-Month-Old Puppy, Gets Paid Leave

Amanda Henderson of Cleburne,
Texas should have made sure her dogs were securely locked up.
Otherwise, her six-month-old pit bull, Maximus, might still be
alive.

Maximus and two other pit bulls escaped Henderson’s property
while she was shopping for school supplies for her kids in August.
Officer Kevin Dupre responded to a call and shot Maximus several
times, killing the pet.

Henderson, who says she never received an explanation of what
happened, just came forward to local media about the incident
because she recently got her hands on Dupre’s body camera, and she
says it contradicts his official account of what took place.

You can watch and judge
for yourself whether or not the officer’s action appeared to be
justified. Warning: The video is graphic:

Dupre’s police report reads, “I raised my duty weapon to the ready
position – pointed at the growling dog’s head. As soon as I lifted
my pistol, the dog began coming up the hill, continuing to growl
and display its teeth…I fired three shots at it.”

Henderson
sees something different take place. “You see the dogs are
happy and playing, they don’t even realize [Dupre] is there until
he calls them over. They say there’s more to the story, but there’s
no more there. There’s no reason he couldn’t have used a
tranquilizer, pepper spray, a taser instead.”

In fact, an animal control officer collected one of Henderson’s
other dogs without problem. That dog was also caught on Dupre’s

body camera, trotting right up to the other officer and obeying
commands to follow. The third pet was “secured without incident
before the shooting” according to the Cleburne Police
Department.

Over the weekend, some 10,000
people liked a Facebook page titled “Justice for Maximus,”
which planned a protest on Saturday.

The police department, which acknowledges it does not train
officers to deal with loose dogs, insists that the “the short
video” of the shooting “does not tell the whole story” of the dog’s
“aggressive” behavior toward Dupre. However, yesterday the
department announced that it was conducting an internal
investigation. And, “we’re also talking to another possible,
independent, group about doing a review,” says Mayor Scott
Cain.

The department doesn’t know how long the investigation will
take, but in the meantime, Dupre is on paid administrative leave as
of Friday.