By LYNAIRE MUNNINGS 

Tribune Staff Reporter 

lmunings@tribunemedia.net

POLICE shot and killed a family’s beloved dog after visiting the wrong residence, then reportedly failed to apologise for the mishap, which has left the owners reeling and demanding accountability.

Tiana Ferguson, 21, said police showed up at her two-storey apartment com- plex in Kemp Road on Sunday looking for someone with an ankle bracelet.

When she opened the door to two men in camouflage uniforms, her dog, Milo, went outside.

“My dog went towards one of the police, and I tried to grab the dog back,” she said yesterday. “I was like inches away from the dog. I heard two shots. My dog was down, and I was crying.”

The man the police were looking for lived downstairs. Ms Ferguson said after the officers left, she went looking for her father and returned to meet police “roughing” him up after he became emotional about the dog’s death.

A viral video of the aftermath of the shooting captured the commotion. At one point, an officer threatened to arrest the father, Silvan Ferguson, for disorderly conduct because the man used obscene language.

Ms Ferguson said the officers showed no remorse.

“They are wrong,” her father added yesterday. “They know that they were wrong, and they still are not trying to minimise the situation to what’s going on, to try to bring some sort of calmness to it. Their first thing was to try to oppress me.
“They trying to overpower me, to say that, oh well they are police, they could get away with any shit, they could just arrest me and that one solved. But, like I tell them, just like how y’all kill my dog, y’all would have to kill me next.”

Mr Ferguson said the dog was like a child to him.

“It feels like they took a piece of my heart out,” he said. “I intend to go to every extent to get justice because it isn’t like the dog came out, the dog was in his house, the dog was home where he lived.”

“That is family. Milo was family. That dog grow from a pup with us. It isn’t just a dog, that’s family. When you get a pet and you grow to love that pet and stuff, that’s like a child.”

Ms Ferguson described the emotional toll of watching her dog die.

Milo, she said, loved eating the food the family ate, like mangoes.

“Every time I get to sit down it was just playing back in my mind,” she said. “Every time I close my eyes, I see his body right there with the blood. I just couldn’t get it out. I tried to sleep last night, but I went to sleep this morning around 4.30am because every time I closed my eyes, the picture of laying right there was in my mind.”

Mr Ferguson filed a complaint with the police’s Complaints and Corruption Branch yesterday. Deputy Commissioner of Police Leamond Deleveaux, who oversees that department, declined to comment.

Kim Aranha, the president of the Bahamas Humane Society, said the police are not trained to deal with residents who have dogs, a long-standing problem.

“The police need to be trained on what to do when they go to a private residence where there is a dog,” she said.

“I think fear is a big part of that and they are not going to like that.”

“All over the world now police forces are being professionally trained on how to handle animals when they go to a house or apartment where there are animals. 

“It is time for our government to have our police force trained in that, and meanwhile, people who shot things without due thought probably should have some form of repercussion. It can’t just happen and you forget about it. It can’t be forgotten about.”