Posted on 04/30/2014 4:24:01 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Arzy, a Labrador-Newfoundland-golden retriever mix, was shot and killed on Monday by a Louisiana police officer, according to owner and traveling Portland musician Brandon Carpenter.
Arzy, a Labrador-Newfoundland-golden retriever mix, was shot and killed on Monday by a Louisiana police officer, according to owner and traveling Portland musician Brandon Carpenter.
Brandon Carpenter, an itinerant musician from Portland, plays with his dog, Arzy Kensington. The dog was killed on Monday by a police officer from Louisiana, according to Carpenter, who is seeking justice for his pet. Courtesy of Brandon Carpenter Brandon Carpenter, an itinerant musician from Portland, plays with his dog, Arzy Kensington. The dog was killed on Monday by a police officer from Louisiana, according to Carpenter, who is seeking justice for his pet. Brandon Carpenter, an itinerant musician from Portland, said Wednesday that a Louisiana police officer shot and killed his dog Monday morning, even though the “incredibly friendly” dog was on a four-foot leash.
“That dog wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Carpenter said of his 90-pound dog in a telephone interview with the BDN. “Everybody loved Arzy. Everybody said, ‘Oh, he’s so friendly. So gentle.’ He was an angel in dog form.”
The 28-year-old musician, who has been on the road for 12 years, had hopped a freight train from Lafayette, Louisiana, to Sulphur, Louisiana, with his friend, 21-year-old Logan Laliberte of Auburn. The duo was on their way to stay with friends in Lake Charles, Louisiana, their backpacks, guitars and the 14-month-old Newfoundland-Labrador-golden retriever mix in tow, when they got off the train in the early morning.
“We were exhausted, and as we were walking, it started to rain,” Carpenter said.
They decided to find a place to sleep a little out of the rain, and clambered into the back of an empty box truck that was parked in the lot of the city newspaper, the Southwest Daily News. About 10 minutes after they got in, Carpenter said, they were woken up by a police officer who drew his gun and ordered them to get out.
“We were extremely compliant. We did everything he asked us to do,” Carpenter said, adding that he tied Arzy to a fence with a short leash when Officer Brian Thierbach of the Sulphur Police Department told him to secure his dog.
Thierbach put the men in handcuffs and ordered them to get on the ground, facing away from the dog. Then the officer, who wanted to get their belongings from the truck, asked if the dog was going to bite or attack him, Carpenter recounted.
“I said no, it’s an incredibly friendly dog. He’s a big teddy bear,” he said.
According to Carpenter, eyewitness Eric Midkiff, an employee of the newspaper, saw the officer pet the dog for a few seconds.
“His tongue was out. His tail was wagging. That’s my dog,” Carpenter said. “Arzy maybe did a little sniff, like do you want to play? Then [the officer] jumped down from the back of the truck and shoots my dog in the head. I watched him convulse his last breath and twitch the life out of him.”
Carpenter said that the officer threw their belongings out of the truck, and then he and Laliberte waited for about half an hour until another police vehicle drove up.
“They put on rubber gloves and pulled out a trash bag,” he said. “They stuffed my magnificent dog into this trash bag. I said, ‘You didn’t have to shoot him.’ The officer smiled at me and said, ‘He nipped at my foot.’ Arzy did nothing like that.”
According to the Southwest Daily News, Midkiff said in an official statement to police that Arzy did not attack the officer.
“He also stated that he saw the dog wagging his tail and acting in a friendly manner, and that it was when the dog bumped against Thierbach that the officer immediately responded by shooting the animal,” the newspaper account stated.
Efforts Wednesday to speak with Midkiff were unsuccessful.
According to the article, newspaper employees had called the police department that morning to report two suspicious-looking men with a dog hanging around the paper’s box trucks. The dog was first thought to be a black Rottweiler mix, according to the account.
An official from the Sulphur Police Department told the BDN Wednesday that the city’s mayor and police chief are currently conducting an investigation into the matter in conjunction with the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office and are not releasing any comments.
For Carpenter, who said that he’s had a lot of extraordinary adventures and had a lot of difficult experiences during his years on the road, the death of his dog in this way is not something from which he can easily move on.
“It was completely monstrous, what this man did,” he said. “We’ll be staying here until justice is served to this police officer.”
A Facebook group he started called “Justice for Arzy” was quickly accumulating posts of support on Wednesday afternoon. According to Carpenter, protesters also are planning to picket the Sulphur Police Department on Saturday.
“He thought I was just a train-hopping punk, and he could shoot my dog and get away with it,” Carpenter said. “You messed with the wrong traveler.”
Yea, they disappear here pretty quickly. Not like in California where they have pan-handling franchises and work that block day in and day out for months at a time.
I never see “Will work for food” people or “Disabled vet needs help” people twice.
It’s probably lawsuit related as near as I can figure out.
More shallow graves.
I think they would rather shoot people, and they do, but sometimes it is a little hard to justify killing people, so they kill dogs instead.
I work for an energy utility, and every other year the state police would bring in a trooper and dog to demonstrate recognizing aggressive behavior in dogs we may encounter in the field, and some actions to take.
Maybe PD’s should get this type of demonstration and training.
What did they suggest?
Shooting dogs is a good way to work through your anger at not being able to shoot people, in a given situation. I wonder if they teach this at the academies.
Tell me I ain’t got balls ping
How do they “disappear “?
Murder ?
Keeping undesirable people away by immoral or illegal acts is something to be condemned and prosecuted. Especially if the undesirable people biggest offense is “they ain’t regular folks”.
Just the basic stuff...the ears up or back, tail up or tucked, don’t run, avoid eye contact, etc..
Still made for an interesting meeting, a couple of us get to put on the padding and get attacked!
Once again, a scumbag, psychopathic cop shoots a dog for no reason. Its beginning to seem the cops are as much problem as solution.
Good question. I don't know, but I think the opinion of many cops, has gone so low, that I know a Freeper, whose son is a cop. He says they hardly speak to each other any more.
This is an excellent example of how not to try to communicate via the written word.
Dude, your out of your element.
Perhaps so, but if he is, I'm right there with him.
I think the cop was a jerk, and so are you.
Oh, and by the way, it's you're, a contraction of you are. "Your" is the second person possessive case pronoun.
So what if the guy has nothing and is what you call a hippie.
The fact that he has very little makes his dog even more important to him."
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Well said.
Actually Maine and Louisiana have some connections. The original Cajuns resettled from the Arcadia region of Maine and there is a slight similarity in the accents. There are still a lot of French people up there too (like his traveling buddy's name implies) and of course there's my favorite explanation from my Mainer cousin: look at crawfish, they're basically little lobsters!
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