A dog was shot and killed by a D.C. Police officer during the busy Adams Morgan Day Festival. According to some eyewitnesses, the dog was shot after getting into a fight with a smaller dog and then biting two men. It happened in the 2300 block of 18 Street N.W.
The dog, named Parrot, was listed on Petfinder.com as a Pit Bull Terrier and Staffordshire Bull Terrier mix.
Noah Siegel said he knows one of the men bitten by the dog. "I heard some dogs barking and some people screaming," Siegel said. "I love dogs but you can’t have dogs attacking people out in a crowd like this."
But others are saying the shooting wasn't justified. "By all accounts, Parrot was a sweet dog who had an adoption pending at the time he was killed," John Valentine, an attorney for Lucky Dog Rescue, wrote in an e-mail to NBC Washington.
A former metropolitan police officer witnessed the shooting. “We were no more than 20 feet away when two dogs got into it," said Tony De Passe. "The officers ran over to try to restrain one of the dogs. By now one dog came loose and bit a man. He fell to the ground. The officer then put his hand on the dog’s throat and tried to restrain the dog. The dog spun around and bit the officer on his hand."
De Passe said said that the officers did everything they could to to quiet the dog, but that the animal was a danger to the crowd.
However, witnesses had a different opinion.
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Valentine pointed to comments left on DCist as showing another side to the story. "These accounts are consistent with what Parrot's Lucky Dog foster reported to us about the incident," Valentine wrote in his e-mail.
"Once the scuffle ended the owner of the larger dog held his dog down to calm him down and then, out of nowhere, police came over and THREW, not in any way led, but THREW the dog to the basement entrance of Brass Knob and shot the dog," commenter Sarah D wrote on the DCist posting.
Another commenter, posting under the handle "aeris37," said he or she works at the Brass Knob. "The officer had the dog under control before he decided to kill him, there is no excuse for the actions that he took," wrote the commenter.
