A Police Dog In Canada Severely Mauled A 6-Year-Old Girl

A police dog in Canada severely injured a 6-year-old girl, biting her so badly and so deeply that tissue was sticking out of some of her wounds, her mother claims.

As the Calgary Herald reports, Saskatoon police were on the trail of two home-invasion suspects and were using police dogs to track them when they rounded a corner and came upon 6-year-old Autumn Clifford. For reasons that remain unclear, one of the dogs instead turned its attention to the young lady and latched onto her and pulled her away from the front porch where she’d been playing.

What happened next is a matter of dispute. According to a police report – which claims that the girl is 8, not 6 – the dog’s handler commanded him or her to let go of the little girl and did so immediately. However, witness Amanda Pritchard says that’s not what happened at all.

“Out of nowhere there was two officers that I saw. One was on top of the dog. Three times he had told the dog to let go. ‘Let go! Let go!,’ he was saying to the dog. The dog did not let go. The dog, in fact, growled at the cop and shook his head like he was going to tear her.”

Police said that the dog, which was in a harness on a leash, rounded a corner of a building while officers were tracking suspects in a home invasion on Saturday afternoon and latched onto the girl.https://t.co/jedqIUt4ne

— The Star Halifax (@thestarhalifax) June 11, 2018

The girl was taken via ambulance to a nearby hospital where she was treated for her injuries, which required stitches. One of the puncture wounds to the little girl’s skin was so deep that tissue was coming out of the wound.

Meanwhile, the police are saying that the girl was only bitten once – a claim her mother, Leslie Welder, doesn’t buy.

“I lifted her shirt and it was way worse than just one bite.”

The young girl is at home recuperating, and her mother says that the young lady is “taking it pretty well.” The police, for their part, called off their hunt for the home-invasion suspect and are promising an investigation into what went wrong that day.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time a police dog has attacked an innocent person.

As the Chicago Tribune reported last December, Minnesota woman Desiree Collins, 52, was merely taking out her garbage when she crossed paths with 5-year-old Gabe, a police dog who was on the hunt for a burglary suspect. Spotting Collins, the dog latched onto her arm and dragged her to the ground. Meanwhile, the officer handling the dog was caught on body-camera footage being nonchalant about the woman’s plight, telling her “[you were] just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”