An Oklahoma mom was inside preparing a birthday cake for her son’s party when all of a sudden — BOOM! First, she saw the blood outside. Then, she saw her son in tears. That’s when she realized what happened.
Vickie Malone had just brought the children inside in order to enjoy some cake and ice cream as they celebrated her 5-year-old son’s birthday when her young son Eli said, “There’s something wrong with Opie,” as he stared out the window of their Wynnewood home.
The birthday cake and ice cream hadn’t even been served when the partygoers heard the bang from outside, and soon, they would realize that the loud noise was the sound of a Wynnewood police officer shooting the family dog Opie.
A three-year-old, 90-pound American Bulldog and Pit Bull mix, Opie was Eli’s best friend. “I would have fun with him when he runned around, and we played tag,” Eli told FOX 25. Things would go from bad to worse for Eli’s birthday when the officer fired on the dog again as children looked on. The police department has called the actions justified.
When the adults ran outside, they saw Opie near the fence that surrounds the yard. “He [Opie] was over here kicking and gasping for air,” Vickie Malone recalled. Meanwhile, the police officer retrieved a rifle from his police vehicle, which he then used to put the dog down, firing two shots from the rifle. “The kids were all watching through the window,” Malone told the New York Daily News.
Rio Youngblood, Malone’s son and Opie’s legal owner, said he asked the officer, “Why’d you shoot my dog?” but he didn’t get an answer. “He walks slowly out to his car, gets an AR-15, and points it at the dog and pulls the trigger,” Youngblood told the Daily News. “He fires another round, and it ended my dog’s life. He lowered his head and drove off.”
Opie’s dead body then laid on the ground, covered with a towel, for more than an hour as the family waited for another police officer to arrive at the scene and take statements from the family as a 5-year-old’s birthday party was ruined in the worst imaginable way.
Initially, the police officer allegedly told Malone that the dog had lunged at him through the fence. According to Wynnewood Police Chief Ken Moore, the officer said the dog was vicious and attacked him by coming around the corner of the house to charge at him. Moore said the officer tried to kick the dog off him before shooting him.
However, a video of the aftermath of the shooting paints a different picture. In the footage, the dead dog, with a gunshot wound to his head, is lying inside the fence that surrounds the property. However, it’s possible that the dog returned to the other side of the fence after being shot.