Gunner was a rescue dog — a one-year-old German shepherd, Labrador and husky mix — who got loose in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, on July 6, 2022. He ended up in a resident's backyard, the kind of place escaped dogs end up. The woman who found him there called the police.
By the time the shooting happened, Gunner was not loose.
Witnesses and video indicated he was restrained on an animal control catch pole — a device that exists so an animal can be held safely at a distance — and that his tail was wagging. That is the moment, according to what witnesses and the footage indicated, when an officer shot him in the head.
The catch pole is the detail this case turns on. The entire purpose of the tool is to end the danger: the dog held, the handler protected, everyone able to slow down and think. Whatever risk a loose one-year-old dog might have posed on his own, the record indicates that risk had already been contained when the shot was fired. Gunner was caught. He was held. Witnesses and video indicated he was wagging his tail.
He was a year old, a rescue, and he died at the end of a restraint pole in a stranger's backyard.
His owner demanded an explanation, publicly. The question was simple: why was a restrained dog shot in the head?
The Lebanon City Police Department's answer, as far as the public record shows, was no answer at all.
No charges were reported. No discipline was reported. No lawsuit appears in the record either. The officer who fired was not publicly named. At the time the shooting was reported, the department had offered the public no accounting of why an officer shot a captured, restrained dog.
An escaped pet, a phone call, a catch pole, a bullet. The one person who could explain the last step in that sequence was not publicly identified, let alone required to explain it. Gunner's owner asked to know why. On the evidence of the record, no answer ever came — and the department that owed one paid nothing at all.