Georgetown Police Dept. speaks out about euthanized k-9
GEORGETOWN, Ky. (ABC36 NEWS NOW) – A Georgetown Police K9 euthanized after an incident in which the dog attacked a family member of its handler and another handler.
“It’s definitely hit our handlers very hard. Not only do we have one handler that is off right now with an injury, but we’ve got another handler that’s not only lost his partner but a member of this family,” said Captain Nicholas Lodal.
Just one week ago the Georgetown Police Department had to make the tough decision of putting down one of it’s K9’s, Rex, after he attacked a handler and family member of his handler.
Rex was just two years old and had been on the force for a year, living with his handler and his family.
Last Thursday, while Rex’s handler was out, a family member took rex to go outside when rex bit them.
Captain Nicholas Lodal says the handler was able to get k9 rex put back into his crate. And the next step was to get him back to the police station.
“And in the process of the others that were on scene that were working to get him safely to from the kennel into the vehicle to transported back here, is when the incident when down between him and the other handler,” said Lodal.”
After multiple attempts to get Rex to release the handler, and Rex not responding to commands, the tough decision to euthanize Rex was made.
Lodal says there is no indication on what caused Rex to become aggressive as this behavior was very out of character for him.
And there are some members of the community upset after learning the department put him down.
“Our priority is making sure that we’re taking care of our handlers and taking care of our agency,” said Lodal. “Just like we had referenced earlier, this has hit very hard with all the members of our agency. So we want to make sure that we take care of them. We’re going to go back, we’re going to revisit our program as a whole and see what areas we can make an improvement and hope that something like this never happens again.”
Lodal says both the family member and the handler who was attacked are doing okay.
