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\nRyan Gray and his dog Max on a plane to Adana in 2023<\/p>\n
Four teenagers are due in court after an assault involving a man and a dog in Bangor, Co Down on Friday.<\/p>\n
The founder of K9 Search and Rescue Ryan Gray and his trained dog Max were attacked by a group of young people on the High Street.<\/p>\n
Mr Gray and Max were part of a rescue team sent to Adana, Turkey in 2023 to search for survivors after an earthquake.<\/p>\n
A 13-year-old boy and a 15-year-old-boy have both been charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm, affray and causing unnecessary suffering to an animal.<\/p>\n
A boy, also 15, was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm and affray.<\/p>\n
A 16-year-old girl was charged with affray and common assault.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the PSNI thanked members of the public who helped them with its investigation.<\/p>\n
“The investigation is ongoing and further arrests will be made when the other suspects are identified,” it added.<\/p>\n
It comes after detectives received a report at around 7.50pm on Friday night of an ongoing fight involving a number of youths and a man.<\/p>\n
Upon arrival at the scene, officers saw a number of young people running off, most of them dressed in dark clothing.<\/p>\n
\nRyan Gray and his dog Max on a plane to Adana in 2023<\/p>\n
A spokesperson said: “It was reported that, following a verbal exchange with approximately 15 to 20 young people as he was walking up the street, the man was punched to the face multiple times by a number of the youths.<\/p>\n
“His dog was also kicked a number of times.”<\/p>\n
Yesterday, K9 Search and Rescue NI confirmed the pair “were viciously assaulted in Bangor last night whilst off duty and socialising”.<\/p>\n
“Our member has received treatment at A&E, and the dog has been assessed by a vet,” it said in a post on Facebook.<\/p>\n
MP for North Down, Alex Easton said he was “absolutely appalled at the vicious and cowardly attack on K9 Search & Rescue NI founder Ryan Gray and his dog Max in Bangor on Friday evening”.<\/p>\n
Mr Easton said Mr Gray “gives his time selflessly to help others through search and rescue work, often in the most challenging of circumstances”.<\/p>\n
“For him to be subjected to such a brutal assault, alongside his trained dog, is both shocking and deeply disturbing,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The fact that Max, a trained search and rescue dog, was also kicked and injured makes this incident all the more sickening,” the MP added.<\/p>\n
He wished Mr Gray and Max a speedy recovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four teenagers are due in court after an assault involving a man and a dog in Bangor, Co…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-371716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}