Left: the family’s surveillance camera shows the moments before the shooting (Don Hesseltine/Facebook). Right: the officer’s raises a pistol and opens fire at Myst (Davenport Police Department).
Two weeks ago, a police officer responding to a call about multiple aggressive dogs on the loose stopped his squad car outside of a Davenport, Iowa, family’s home as two bike-riding young boys returned to the residence with, Myst, who was walking alongside them off of a leash. Moments later, when the cop approached the edge of the lawn, the dog ran towards him barking and “baring its teeth,” the officer opened fire twice, and the canine died on the lawn, as one boy cried and a shocked mother screamed.
The series of events from the night of Aug. 21, recorded on the family’s cameras and on officer Ethan Bock’s bodycam, prompted the Davenport Police Department to say that the killing was “lawful” and sparked Don Hesseltine, Myst’s owner and an Afghanistan military veteran, to call the shooting an execution.
From the perspective of the officer, when Myst “charged me at full speed, barking aggressively at me” he held out his hand hoping the “dog would catch my scent and back away from me.”
Instead, the officer said, what followed was a “threatening bark,” the canine “baring its teeth,” and “lung[ing] at me multiple times, snapping its teeth at me in an attempt to bite me.”
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“This put me in fear of being seriously injured,” Bock said, according to local CBS affiliate KGAN. “I drew my service handgun and continued to back up. The dog lunged at me as I was backing up, trying to bite me. I discharged my firearm twice, striking the dog.”
On the bodycam video, Bock could be heard saying “Shots fired. I just shot a dog.”
Graphic video shared by Hesseltine showed the incident that he says has scarred his son, the boy’s mother, and his nephew for life.
The woman could be heard saying “oh my gosh” as the dog ran at the officer. She called after Myst and ran towards him, but by this point Bock had drawn his firearm. After he opened fire, it took a few seconds for the witnesses to realize that the dog, which ran back towards the house whimpering, was fatally shot.
“Oh my God!” the mother yelled, as one boy cried.
In posts on Facebook, Hesseltine said the officer, whom he likened to John Wick, was “trigger happy,” and that he “[m]urdered my dog in front of my kid, his mom and his cousin who also grew up with Myst,” who was just 2 years old.
Enraged at a city council meeting when he was told his time to speak about the shooting was up, Hesseltine flipped over a lectern and swore while wearing a T-shirt that said “It wasn’t just a puppy.”
Don Hesseltine flips a lectern (Inside Edition).
Allies in attendance chanted “Let him speak! Let him speak!” as the meeting unfolded, Inside Edition video of the outburst showed.
After the shooting, KWQC reported, Hesseltine said that “doesn’t make any sense” that deadly force was the officer’s “first option” under circumstances where “a barking dog that could be potentially nipping at your feet[.]”
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“You know, you’ve got your mace, you’ve got your baton, you’ve got your taser,” he reportedly said. “My 7-year-old son goes, Dad, why didn’t the cop tase him instead?”
In a statement on the shooting, the city confirmed that same officer who shot Myst had as recently as July run over someone else’s dog. “Some frickin’ dog just ran out here and I smoked it” and “That’s why you’ve gotta have your dog on a leash, bro,” Bock said after that incident, Inside Edition reported.
The city said the dog deaths were “tragic” but not “malicious,” and it slammed threats against Bock and his family.
“But to be clear — these incidents, while both tragic, are unrelated, and any attempt to mischaracterize them as malicious actions is inaccurate,” the City of Davenport said. “The violent threats on social media targeting the officer and his family are wrong and terribly inappropriate.”
At the same time, the city offered condolences and said the latest incident was “upsetting to us, particularly because children were present.”
“In this case the Davenport Police officer expressed his sincere fear that he would be seriously injured, and we believe the officer’s body worn camera supports his statements,” the city concluded.
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