A Missouri mayor quit after a police officer shot and killed a man’s deaf and blind Shih Tzu when the dog got out of his garden.
The departure was revealed by the city of Sturgeon on Saturday. Upsetting body camera video showed the officer shooting the dog, named Teddy, several times as it stumbled around in a woman’s open backyard on May 19.
Sioux Falls Alderman Seth Truesdell said in a statement, “Like you, we were just as horrified by what we saw.” “What the officer did did not reflect the values and beliefs of the people who live in Sturgeon or the board of Alderman.”
Truesdell also talked about his new job as mayor, which he took over from Kevin Abrahamson after the latter quit on Friday.
This happened after the city’s Facebook page first defended the officer’s use of deadly force by saying, “The officer acted within his authority.”
Truesdell and local news outlets both named the officer as Myron Woodson. He has been put on leave until further notice, and Truesdell said that the nearby Boone County Sheriff’s Department has been contacted about an investigation.
“I tell the owners of Teddy that I’m sorry for their loss,” Truesdell said. “I know that no matter what I do, Teddy will never come back.” Together with the board of aldermen, I want to help the City of Sturgeon get better.
Not everything was clear about Woodson’s job situation or the investigation into the shooting. A spokesperson for the Boone County Sheriff’s Office told HuffPost on Tuesday that the office is not involved in the investigation, and Truesdell did not reply right away to a request for comment.
The Sturgeon Police Department also didn’t answer emails asking for comment, and as of Tuesday afternoon, its call box was marked as full.
Woodson shot Teddy after a woman found him stumbling around in her backyard, as shown on his body camera video. He was worried about his safety, so she called the city on Friday to ask for help finding the dog’s owner.
“I gave the dog a bowl of water, and it drank from it and licked my arm and leg.” “He was in no way a threat,” the woman said, but she wouldn’t say her name because she was afraid of being hurt.
Nicholas Hunter, the dog’s owner, told HuffPost on Friday that Teddy got out of his garden kennel while he was out with friends. Hunter was on his way to get Teddy when he got a call from another friend saying that the dog had been killed.
Hunter said that when he asked Woodson what he had done, the officer told him that he thought Teddy looked hurt or alone and wanted to “put him down.”
“Because he can’t see or hear, he walked funny and held his head sideways.” “He went deaf and blind because of a neurological problem that the vet told us about,” Hunter said of Teddy, who was 5.
The woman who found Teddy told HuffPost that she filled out an official complaint with the city demanding that Woodson be removed because he quickly turned violent, which she saw as a threat to the public.
“The officer shouldn’t be able to work as an officer.” “He has trouble with power,” she said.
