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TARPON SPRINGS (FOX 13) - Around 11:30 p.m. Thursday night, Jennifer Grove hears what she thinks is a gunshot. Now she wonders if it was someone shooting her beloved dog, Radar.
Not long before, the one-year-old Shepard mix, got out through a hole in the backyard fence.
He was discovered the next day behind an empty house, just over a block away.
”He seemed very friendly, and calm, however you could tell he was in distress. He was whimpering,” said Tarpon Springs Police Officer Brittney Rose.
Officer Rose rushed Radar to the animal hospital.
“You could tell when he wasn’t able to move his lower extremities that something dire was going on,” she said.
The bullet severed the young pup’s spinal cord. The Grove’s were forced to make a gut-wrenching decision. They had to put Radar down.
“He was a family member. We're devastated we lost him,” Grove said.
Nearby neighbors wonder if someone mistook Radar in the dark for one of the coyote’s that frequents this preserve. His owners want answers.
“Somebody's sick I don’t know who could look at his face and pull the trigger it doesn’t make sense,” she said.
The family is offering a $300 reward for information leading to an arrest.
Tarpon Springs Police are looking into the case, because it could be a case of Animal Cruelty.