Last week, through a pal with friends in San Diego, I learned about the murder of a police dog named Stryker New Year’s Eve. If this made the national news at the time, I missed it. If it wasn’t national news, it should have been.
Stryker’s partner/handler sent him to subdue a drunk-driving suspect when a chase ended atop the Coronado Bridge. The suspect jumped off the bridge with Stryker. The man survived the 200-foot fall into the water. Styker did not.
Here’s a link to a related NRP story.
If you’ve ever been to San Diego, you know how scary-high the bridge is. The terror of the fall for Stryker haunts me.
I hope that Stryker bit the crap out of the guy on the way down. Tom wonders if the guy meant to throw Stryker, but the dog took him down too — American Gladiator style. No matter. Stryker died in the line of duty. Let me try that again … Stryker was murdered in the line of duty.
There’s another court hearing Feb 5 for the suspect. Last I heard, he was being held on a $1 million bond. I had the opportunity to send a thank you note to the judge in the case through his clerk. Because I come from a family full of police officers and firefighters, I let him know that to me the crime equals the murder of any human emergency responder on the job.
RIP dear Stryker … dog, hero, good boy!
****
If you would like to send a note too, here’s the info:
The judge is Robert
C. Coates. The name of the defendant is Cory
Byron.
My friend who alerted me to this story said, “If you do send an e-mail, make it clear in your subject line that you are not conducting official court business. They do
not accept official court business via e-mail. Praising a judge is not official
business.”
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