A New Mexico woman and her family have reached a settlement with the City of Texico after their beloved family dog Pepper was shot dead by the city’s police chief.
Beverly Bentley was at work on November 10, 2021, when Police Chief Douglas Bowman, a 16-year veteran of the force, paid her a visit to tell her that he shot her dog.
‘He said something about shooting my dog, and it took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about because he said he was being aggressive,’ Bentley said. ‘That dog is the least aggressive dog I have ever owned!’
The grim execution was caught on Ring video, where Bowman stood some distance away on the lawn, staring at the dog as it barked from the porch.
The officer glanced over his shoulder in both directions before pulling out his pistol and firing. Afterwards, he walked onto the porch and stood over Pepper’s body.
‘I’m sorry dude, but I had to do that,’ Bowman said.
Grabbing Pepper by the collar, he dragged the dog onto the lawn before retrieving a hose from the property and washing away its blood.
After seeing the footage of the incident, Bowman filed an incident report, writing that a man called the station saying ‘there is a damn dog that almost bit me.’
He arrived on the scene and saw Pepper, who matched the victim’s description, and said the dog began ‘barking and snarling.’
‘The victim then came up to me and told me that was the dog and that it had almost bit him and he was afraid the dog might bite someone else if something wasn’t done about him,’ Bowman wrote.
Pepper took off and Bowman trailed the dog to the home.
As Pepper allegedly continued to bark and snarl, Bowman wrote: ‘At this point, I did not want the dog to run away again and bite or harm someone. I made the decision to shoot the dog for my safety and the safety of anyone else in the community.’
Bentley insists that her beloved dog was not aggressive.
‘That dog got me through a lot of hard times, and then all of a sudden, he was taken away,’ she said. ‘My mother was bedridden, and she would put her hand down, and he would let her pet him.’
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