Police dog attacks man for 15 minutes before officer ‘forced’ to kill it, cops say
A Montana police officer was forced to kill a K-9 from another department after the animal attacked a man and couldn’t be stopped using “multiple non-lethal methods,” officials said.
The officer from the Laurel Police Department ultimately ended the roughly 15-minute attack with “two fatal blows” to the dog’s head, the department said in a news release.
The dog was a Belgian Malinois belonging to Montana Highway Patrol, officials said.
The victim was taken to a hospital after the attack at about 8 a.m. on Thanksgiving with serious but not life-threatening injuries, police said.
Montana Highway Patrol said the dog, named Mike, had been with the agency for nearly three years and was a “full-service police utility dog, trained in the areas of narcotics detection, article search, area search, tracking, and apprehension.”
The dog freed itself from its kennel and bit a man doing yard work nearby, the agency said. It was staying with a highway patrol canine handler who wasn’t its typical handler, the agency said in a Dec. 3 news release.
When the Laurel police officer arrived, he “attempted multiple non-lethal methods to stop the attack and was assisted by the Laurel Volunteer Fire Department’s chief who had arrived with a catch pole,” Laurel police said.
“In my mind I was thinking, ‘Is he going to switch and come at us?’ I really thought that we were all probably going to end up getting bit at some point,” Fire Chief JW Hopper told KTVQ.
Laurel city officials described the situation as unavoidable.
“The city wants to express its sadness about the death of the canine involved, and the impact upon the victim involved,” city officials said in a statement on Facebook.
“The priority in this situation was protecting the health and well-being of the victim involved, and protecting innocent third parties, including law enforcement and the EMS personnel responding. The responding personnel, in a crisis situation, did everything possible to diffuse the situation before any lethal force was involved,” the city said.
Laurel police are investigating, and Montana Highway Patrol is doing its own internal investigation, the highway patrol said.
“We are thankful to the Laurel Police Department for their assistance in conducting the investigation and to the officer who was forced to make the difficult decision to end K9 Mike’s life Thursday,” Montana Highway Patrol Lt. Col. Kyle Hayter said in the news release. “Rest assured, our K9’s are highly trained to obey their handler’s commands and do not present a danger to the general public. This was an unfortunate, but isolated, incident. We are currently reviewing our training and procedures to do everything we can to keep it from happening again in the future.”
It’s at least the second time in recent weeks that a police dog was killed after it wouldn’t stop attacking someone. On Nov. 19 in Arizona, a deputy marshal shot and killed his K-9 partner after the dog latched onto his leg and wouldn’t let go, McClatchy News previously reported.
Police dog attack statistics aren’t easy to come by nationally, but The Marshall Project examined more than 150 cases in an investigation with AL.com, The Indianapolis Star and the Invisible Institute. The cases involved a range of circumstances, including three instances where an attack led to a person’s death, the investigation found.
Laurel is about a 15-mile drive southwest of Billings.
This story was originally published December 3, 2024 at 1:01 PM with the headline "Police dog attacks man for 15 minutes before officer ‘forced’ to kill it, cops say."
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