The Sturgeon mayor\u2019s office did not respond to a request for comment. Woodson, who has left the department, could not be reached for comment.<\/p>\n
The shooting shocked and outraged residents of Sturgeon, a town of about 1150 people 32km north of Columbia, where animal control duties were handled by the local police. <\/p>\n
There were calls to disband the city\u2019s two-officer law enforcement agency after Teddy\u2019s death. <\/p>\n
Teddy escaped from his fenced-in kennel while Hunter was at dinner and wandered into a nearby yard. The neighbour called police, hoping to reunite Teddy with his owner. <\/p>\n
Woodson responded and fruitlessly tried to secure Teddy with a \u201ccatch pole\u201d for about five minutes before drawing his gun and firing twice on Teddy as the small dog was facing away, according to Hunter\u2019s lawsuit and body-camera video.<\/p>\n
The city posted on its Facebook page that the officer shot the dog out of concern that it had rabies. <\/p>\n
A separate post later added that officials had reviewed the body-camera video and found the officer\u2019s actions justified.<\/p>\n
Kevin Abrahamson, Sturgeon\u2019s Mayor at the time, initially defended the shooting before abruptly resigning. The new mayor suspended Woodson, who eventually left the department, according to ABC17.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe city didn\u2019t handle it well,\u201d Seth Truesdell, who replaced Abrahamson as Mayor, told local news station KMIZ. Truesdell said the city was \u201cinundated with over 700 calls a day from all over the world\u201d after the shooting.<\/p>\n
Chris Green, the Animal Legal Defence Fund\u2019s executive director, said pet dogs are killed by police more often than people realise. <\/p>\n
He also said it was clear from the officer\u2019s body-cam footage that Teddy was \u201cnot a threat\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyone who sees that footage of Teddy – he\u2019s a tiny little dog, he\u2019s not advancing towards the officer,\u201d Green said.<\/p>\n
The group is hoping the settlement leads Missouri to pass legislation mandating training for law enforcement officers encountering people\u2019s pets. Not having such training puts people and animals at risk, Green said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it ends up costing a bunch of money, which is unnecessary,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor\u2019s Picks<\/a>, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week\u2019s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sturgeon mayor\u2019s office did not respond to a request for comment. Woodson, who has left the department,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[95962,74,3041,3469,95,23541,115,2199,83801,95960,17900,33445,42,78,8307,18557,440,16122,17250,28414,43,10932,2738,675,3044,7819,10117,1361,223,61,40,38,41,39,95961],"class_list":["post-141541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-95962","tag-after","tag-agency","tag-agreed","tag-and","tag-blind","tag-calls","tag-city","tag-deaf","tag-disband","tag-enforcement","tag-fatally","tag-headlines","tag-in","tag-law","tag-led","tag-local","tag-mans","tag-mayors","tag-missouri","tag-news","tag-officer","tag-owner","tag-police","tag-resignation","tag-shooting","tag-shot","tag-that","tag-the","tag-to","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-us500000"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}