A Trooper Fired Seven Shots at Pumpkin. The State Police Declined to Release Details.

Pumpkin's family lives in Mamakating, New York, near Wurtsboro. In September 2025, New York State Police troopers from Troop F were at the family's home conducting interviews; they were seeking witnesses in an investigation. The household was not the target of a raid or an arrest — the troopers had come looking for people who might help them.

While they were there, Pumpkin ran outside and charged one of the troopers, by the account that emerged. The trooper, backed into a corner behind a vehicle, fired seven shots. Two of them hit Pumpkin. The other five did not hit the dog, and the public record does not say where they went.

Pumpkin survived being shot twice.

Pumpkin's owner had one word for the trooper's response: reckless. Seven rounds fired outside a family's home — a home the state police had approached in search of cooperation, not conflict — with five of those rounds missing the dog entirely. The owner called that reckless, on the record.

What did the New York State Police say to any of this? Almost nothing. Troop F declined to release details. The trooper who fired the seven shots has not been publicly named. Whether the shooting was reviewed, whether it complied with the state police's own policies, whether anyone in the chain of command asked why seven rounds were necessary against one dog — the public record contains no answers, because the agency chose not to provide them.

The accountability record

No consequences of any kind were reported. No discipline. No review made public. No accounting of seven bullets fired in a residential setting.

The asymmetry is the story. A family that state troopers approached for help watched one of those troopers shoot their dog twice, and when they called the response reckless, the agency's answer was silence: no name, no details, no explanation. Pumpkin recovered from the two gunshot wounds. The public's ability to evaluate what its state police did outside that home never got the chance — Troop F declined to release the details that would make evaluation possible, and nothing in the record suggests anyone required the agency to do otherwise.