By the time a state trooper arrived on Clarks Neck Road on October 5, 2024, the kennel owner who lived there had already done law enforcement's work for it: she had detained a car-burglary suspect on her own property in Pitt County, North Carolina.
The trooper was not there for her suspect. He was responding to a crash nearby, and he came onto her property. There he encountered her dogs: Bonnie and Clyde, two Belgian Malinois.
One of the dogs ran toward him. The trooper opened fire. When the shooting stopped, both dogs were dead — the dog that had run toward him, and the dog that had not.
On the central fact — a state trooper killed two dogs on their owner's property — there is no dispute. On what justified it, there is. The trooper claimed self-defense. The owner said one of her dogs was shot while trying to get away. And the reported account contains a gap the self-defense claim has never publicly filled: it describes one dog running toward the trooper, while two dogs died. The only explanation in the record for the second is the owner's — that it was trying to get away.
She did not absorb the loss quietly. Two days after the shooting, she spoke out publicly, disputing the trooper's version of events.
What has the North Carolina State Highway Patrol done in response? Nothing that has reached the public. No discipline has been reported. The trooper has not been publicly named. No findings, no review, no consequence of any kind appears in the available account.
Consider what this incident asked of each party, and what each received. A civilian caught and held a burglary suspect on her own land. A trooper who came for a car crash left both of her Belgian Malinois dead. His claim of self-defense stands unexamined in public; her account of a dog shot while trying to flee stands unanswered. The agency that employs him has reported no discipline, no findings, and no name. Bonnie and Clyde are dead, and the public record of consequence for the trooper who killed them consists of a single word: none.