{"id":391567,"date":"2026-09-05T18:42:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T18:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/391567\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T18:42:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T18:42:13","slug":"cocoa-police-department-announces-death-of-beloved-k9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/391567\/","title":{"rendered":"Cocoa Police Department announces death of beloved K9"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Officers say K9 Draco died after collapsing during training Friday<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" loading=\"eager\" decoding=\"async\" role=\"presentation\"  style=\"object-fit:cover;max-width:1920px;max-height:1080px;aspect-ratio:1.7777777777777777;width:100%\"  src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/7ARUIPCGQZHZXM4VI3K52TB4DQ.png\"\/>Cocoa Police Department announces death of beloved K9 &#8220;Draco&#8221; (Cocoa Police Department Facebook)<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">COCOA, Fla. \u2013 Cocoa Police announced on social media Saturday the death of their beloved K9, Draco.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">Police say Draco collapsed suddenly during a training exercise Friday, and though every effort was made to save him, he passed away just before 8 a.m. Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">The 7-year-old Belgian Malinois joined the department in 2022 as a dual-certified patrol apprehension and narcotics detection K9, adding he served the community alongside his handler apprehending dangerous suspects and removing illegal drugs and firearms from the streets.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">The Cocoa Police Department says they grieve alongside all those who knew Draco, as they thanked him for his service. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">The police department adding \u201cRest easy, good boy. We\u2019ll take it from here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf ilkOIf copyright\">Copyright 2026 by WKMG ClickOrlando &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Officers say K9 Draco died after collapsing during training Friday Cocoa Police Department announces death of beloved K9&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[315,7286,28,30,29,105022,36376,156536,132,8181],"class_list":["post-391567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-brevard-county","tag-cocoa","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-grieving","tag-k9","tag-k9-death","tag-police","tag-police-officers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}