Owners distraught over dog's shooting by Fort Worth police officer

By Barry Shlachter and Anna M. Tinsley

barry@star-telegram.com

FORT WORTH – Twenty-four hours after a police officer shot Lily, a 5-year-old Border Collie-English Setter mix, its owners still don't understand why the police officer was on their property and why he used lethal force.

Mark and Cindy Boling had just returned from a shopping trip and their two dogs had slipped into their truck, then into the garage, before re-emerging when an officer walked up the driveway in the 4700 block of Norma Street in the Meadowbrook neighborhood in east Fort Worth.

Asked by the officer to control his two dogs, Mark Boling urged him not to advance, but he did. "My dogs don't bite, They're not going to hurt you," Boling, 52, an electronics technician with a defense contractor, recalled saying. "They're just going to run up to you."

"I asked him to stay where he was."

In a drama that unfolded in seconds, the officer walked up the Boling's elevated porch, then onto a painted brick pillar several feet higher, Boling said.

A statement issued by police spokesman Sgt. Pedro Criado said the officer waited by the driveway when two barking dogs charged him in an aggressive manner while he repeatedly asked a male at the house to call the animals back. Then the unnamed officer jumped onto the porch pillar.

"As the dogs were getting closer to attack/bite the officer, the officer fired his service weapon, striking the dog closest to him," the spokesman said.

Here, the couple's account diverges from the police statement.

Boling said he had gained control of one of the dogs by the time the officer raised his gun, "Then I hear my wife yelling, 'Don't shoot my baby, please don't hurt my baby!"

From above the dog, the officer fired once, striking the 5-year-old mixed breed on the back. It dashed to the back yard where it bled to death within three minutes.

Cindy Boling, a paralegal, said she shouted, "Did you shoot my dog?"

"You'd better check on your dog," she quoted the officer as responding.

But the policeman still had the gun raised and pointed toward her husband and surviving dog, she asserted.

"Why are you on my property — I didn't call you," Boling recalls asking.

"Copper theft," he said the officer replied.

According to Criado, the reported theft had occurred two blocks up the street near 4900 Norma. The spokesman's emailed statement added that any time an officer shoots a firearm, that triggers a thorough review by "high ranking officials."

The Bolings said neighbors overheard police who arrived on the scene saying that the responding officer had mistakenly thought he was in the 4900 block. The officer himself was heard wrongly describing Lily as a pit bull, the couple said.

Nine police cars appeared on the scene and marked off the area with yellow tape. A sergeant handed Mark Boling a card with a number for the department's risk management office, in case he wanted to inquire about restitution for the dog they had adopted from the Humane Society.

A day later, the couple remains inconsolable. They were told not to expect an official police response for at least a week.

As his wife openly wept, Mark Boling asked, "Why didn't he Mace my dog. Why did he do some something so ... so final. Why didn't he move off my property?"