Police Shot Max Four Times and Apologized. The Surveillance Video Disputed Their Account.

Max lived on Orange Avenue in Santa Ana, California — a German Shepherd–Belgian Malinois mix in Luz Vega's family. On July 30, 2025, Santa Ana police officers came to the street to handle a family disturbance call. Before the call was over, officers had shot Max four times. He died of his wounds.

What happened between the officers' arrival and the gunfire depends entirely on who is telling it.

The Santa Ana Police Department said a large, aggressive dog attacked an officer. That is the department's explanation for the four rounds.

Luz Vega disputed that account — and so, per the reporting, did the surveillance video. In her telling, Max was a friendly dog who had simply wandered outside with the residents: not an animal launching an attack, but a family pet walking into the middle of a police response on his own street.

The two versions cannot both be true. One describes an attack that justified four shots. The other describes a dog who did nothing more than come out of his own home while the people he lived with did the same.

The department apologized. It also opened an investigation. The family made clear that an apology was not what they were asking for: they demanded accountability, and they asked for coverage of roughly $3,000 in veterinary bills — the cost of trying to save Max's life after officers shot him.

What happened to the officers

The officers who shot Max have not been publicly named. The department's investigation was opened; no findings and no discipline have been reported, and no payment of the family's veterinary bills has been reported either. The apology is, so far, the entirety of the accountability.

That leaves the ledger like this: a dead dog, a police account of an attack, surveillance video reported to dispute that account, unnamed officers, an internal investigation with no public outcome, and a family carrying both the grief and a roughly $3,000 bill. Santa Ana's apology acknowledged that something went wrong on Orange Avenue. Whether anyone is ever held responsible for it — and whether the family is ever made whole — are questions the department's own investigation has yet to answer in public.