A Faulkner County sheriff’s deputy has been placed on paid leave after he shot a small dog Friday evening in a resident’s yard, a sheriff’s office spokesman said Saturday.
Video of the encounter, posted on the resident’s Facebook page, had been reposted about 2,600 times as of 5 p.m. Saturday. A statement about the shooting on the Faulkner County sheriff’s office social media site had received roughly 2,300 comments by late Saturday afternoon.
The shooting occurred while Deputy Keenan Wallace was answering a service call Friday evening in Shiloh Estates near Conway, sheriff’s office spokesman Deputy Erinn Stone said.
The sheriff’s office provided few details and would not disclose the reason why a deputy was called to the property. It did say in a statement that the dog was aggressive.
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The dispute began around 4:30 p.m. Friday when a woman standing in the road in front of his home in the 3400 block of Antietam Drive pointed a gun at the dog and in the direction of his home, Canady said. He told the woman to put the gun away and said that, when she did so, she replied that she was going to call authorities.
Canady said he went to a gas station and, when he returned, a deputy’s vehicle was in the street near his home. Soon after getting out of his vehicle, the deputy approached the home and Canady began filming the interaction.
In the video, which Canady verified for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, two small dogs run around near the deputy’s feet, barking and wagging their tails.
The deputy asks Canady to come to the road to speak with him and, when Canady refuses, the deputy begins walking toward him. As he approaches, the camera tilts toward the ground and a shot rings out. When the camera focuses on the deputy again, the small dog is writhing on the ground and crying loudly.
“Are you f-----g kidding me?” Canady shouts. “You’re f-----g kidding me.”
“I told you,” the deputy responds.
Later, Canady said he did not know how to react or understand why the deputy had fired his weapon in a residential area.
Canady said he took the dog to a veterinarian for treatment and it is in stable condition. The animal cannot eat because its jaw is broken, the homeowner said.
“It’s never going to go back to normal, but I want it to be rectified,” he said. “This man’s actions should not go unpunished.”
Stone said Wallace, who also had a K-9, was placed on paid leave while authorities determine whether any local, state or federal laws, as well as any sheriff’s office policies, were violated.
Canady said that after the shooting, he noticed that the officer, or a second deputy who arrived later, had left a citation for an animal ordinance violation on his porch chair.
