Family still questions dog shooting by deputy

While the Sheriff's Office has said an investigation into the shooting of a dog last month by a deputy is closed, the family still is reeling.

"I can't believe he shot my dog. It didn't dawn on me until after that he could have shot me," Linda Stewart, 61, said Friday.

On July 24, Deputy Morgan Tucker went to Stewart's home on Fifth Street and entered her dark yard about 9:30 p.m. after someone reported a dispute over a used car sale.

Stewart said she had her front door open to let in the night air, her porch light off to keep out the bugs and was watching television while Topaz lay nursing her three pups and her older dog Sampson slept on the floor.

When Stewart saw a flashlight in her yard, she said, she got up to walk outside and Topaz ran past her out the door.

"I started out to get her and I heard him say, 'Get back, get back,' and I never got off the porch before he shot her," she said.

Topaz ran back into the house and was found later by Stewart dead in a pool of blood on the living room floor.

It wasn't until Tucker called over his radio for backup that Stewart realized he was a police officer, she said.

According to Sheriff Ken Furlong, Tucker reported the dog bit him in the leg and he fired two shots in fear for his life. By the following afternoon, he said, the investigation found the shooting justified.

Stewart, retired from the California Department of Corrections, said she finds it hard to believe Topaz bit the deputy in the leg, since she trained Topaz to go for people's feet.

Paramedics noted a bite impression on the officer's leg, but the injury did not break the skin, said Furlong.

Stewart also disputes reports that Topaz bit a man who had come into her yard earlier in the evening.

"She snapped at his feet, but she didn't bite him," she said.

Furlong said Stewart directed investigators to that man, who told them he was bitten in the arm.

The incident has left Stewart and her daughter Becki West questioning the Sheriff's Office protocol that doesn't require an officer to announce himself when entering a yard.

And while Stewart can believe Tucker feared for his life - "(Topaz) moves fast, she's dark, he's in a dark area, so yes I can see that," she said - she also said she was alarmed at the speed in which the case was closed.

"That deputy was never off the street," she said.

Furlong said after interviewing Stewart, witnesses and the deputy, his internal investigation found the officer's actions justified.

"I would have walked through that gate on that call to contact the property owner, too. So I cannot fault the officer for walking through that gate," he said. "This is an extraordinarily unfortunate incident. I have not found either in training or in policy or in practice that anybody did anything wrong. There's no other way to put it. The officer was fully justified in what he did.

"To whatever degree the bite was, the dog did bite him. And with the circumstances of the yard - the dim lighting, the fenced in area, the fact that the officer had entered the fenced in area - the officer had a right to defend himself."

Stewart said she would like the Sheriff's Office to look at their policies.

"If there's a lit door, for God's sake use it. By not identifying himself he put himself at risk and caused (Topaz's) death. Don't go into a gated yard with no way out," she said.

Yet despite the grief, Stewart said one good thing came out of the incident.

When animal services came to remove Topaz's body, they noted her older dog Sampson's deteriorating condition. Suffering from hip dysplasia, barely able to walk and rife with tumors on his hind end, Animal Control officers offered to put Sampson to sleep at no cost to Stewart.

She had been trying to save the $200 for the euthanasia for months, said Stewart, who lives on a fixed income.

"For that I am grateful. For the first time in months he was out of pain," she said, her voice wracked with emotion.

"He was my baby and she was my protector. I miss them."