On Monday evening, DeKalb County, Ga., police officers were responding to a burglary call when they arrived at the wrong house. In a matter of minutes, the officers managed to shoot the unarmed homeowner, kill his dog and wound one of their own.
"I hear Leah screaming; I see Chris walking out, 'They just shot me, they just shot me and they killed my dog,'" neighbor Tama Colson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Tuesday. "So I got him to lay down, took my shirt off and rendered first aid. And Chris just kept saying, 'Why did they shoot me? Why did they shoot my dog?' "
According to the Journal-Constitution, around 7:30 p.m. Monday, Chris McKinley; his wife, Leah; and his 1-year-old daughter were watching the movie Serendipity when the family's dog, a female boxer, began barking. McKinley got up to see what was upsetting the dog. What he didn't know was that, according to reports, police officers, who were supposed to be at the house at the end of the cul-de-sac in McKinley's neighborhood, had instead entered a screened-in porch area of his property through "a reportedly unlocked screen door," according to a Georgia Bureau of Investigation report.
McKinley walked into the area with his dog, and the officers reportedly opened fire.
"He says, 'I opened the door to see what the dogs were barking at, and I see black uniforms and I hear pop-pop-pop-pop,'" Colson told the Journal-Constitution.
The 36-year-old man was shot in the leg and his dog was killed; also, one of the officers, identified as Travis Jones, was wounded by another of the officers in the shooting, the Journal-Constitution reports.
According to the newspaper, McKinley was treated and released from a local hospital and declined to speak with the newspaper. Officer Jones was listed in "serious but stable condition." Jones, and two other officers—Quhanna Lloyd and Timothy Harden—have all been placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation.
"Are we perfect?" DeKalb Director of Public Safety Cedric Alexander told the Journal-Constitution. "Absolutely not. But when we find a mistake, we own it. We own the fact that we were at the wrong house. We didn't hide it. We didn't mismanage it. We were at the wrong location based on information that was given to us."
Read more at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.