In August 2022, Tina Hight called 911. She lived in Columbia County, Arkansas, and she needed help — that is why deputies exist, and it is why Deputy Brian Williams of the Columbia County Sheriff's Office came to her home.
What Deputy Williams did when he got there was fire his weapon at her Pomeranian.
He claimed the dog was charging him. A Pomeranian is a small dog, and Williams missed it entirely.
The bullet struck Tina Hight in the shin.
Then, the record states, he initially denied having shot her.
Take the sequence in order, because each step compounds the last. A woman calls for help. The deputy who answers fires a gun at a small dog — his stated justification being that it charged him. The shot misses the animal and hits the caller he was dispatched to assist. And his first response to shooting the woman he came to help was denial.
The dog was unharmed. Tina Hight was not. The bullet lodged in her shin, and a year later it was still there — a piece of Columbia County Sheriff's Office ammunition carried in the leg of a woman who had called her county for help.
In August 2023, Hight filed a federal lawsuit.
That lawsuit is the entire accountability record. No discipline of Deputy Williams was reported. No charges were reported. The sheriff's office made no public accounting that appears in the record — not for the decision to fire at a small dog, not for striking the caller, not for the initial denial that he had shot her.
So the burden of consequence sits where it nearly always sits in these cases: on the person who was harmed. Hight must litigate in federal court, at her own cost and on her own time, to establish what happened when she asked her county for help. If she wins, the public will pay the judgment. Deputy Williams, as far as the public record shows, has paid nothing and answered to no one.
She called 911 for help. The deputy who answered shot her in the leg and initially denied it. The bullet stayed in her shin. The record of any consequence for the deputy who fired it is empty.