The Secret Service said Tuesday that the dog that one of its off-duty agents fatally shot in Brooklyn was actually on a leash, but “unrestrained.”
The federal law enforcement agency made the clarification after saying shortly after the Monday night incident that the employee opened fire on an “unleashed and aggressive” pooch.
“An off-duty Secret Service employee was involved in the shooting of an unrestrained and aggressive canine in Brooklyn, NY yesterday,” an agency spokesman said in a statement Tuesday. “As this is an ongoing investigation, the Secret Service will not have further comment.”
The agency says that the dog was on a leash, but was unsecured from its owner who was not present.
A source familiar with the investigation confirmed to The Post that the dog was on a leash, but that no one was holding the leash at the time of the shooting.
The agent fired a single shot at the dog on Caton Place near East 8th Street in the neighborhood of Windsor Terrace at around 9:45 p.m. Monday, police said.
The Secret Service employee told police that the dog charged at him, according to cops.
Area resident Steven Miller, a doctor, told The Post Tuesday that he heard the gunshot go off from his apartment across the street and ran outside.
“I saw the dog lying on the side and a white SUV parked right on the corner. I asked, ‘Did the dog get hit by a car?’ And the owner said, ‘No, that guy shot it,’” Miller said.
Miller said the agent identified himself as “a cop” and told him that the “dog had attacked him.”
“That didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense — his clothes were in perfect order,” said Miller, who added that the dog’s owners “were distraught and angry.”
Miller said the owner, who called the female pooch Bambi, told him that it did its business under a nearby tree, but “the dog wandered around the corner” when the owner went to pick up the stool “and that’s when the officer shot the dog.”
“He said the dog tried to run back to him after [she] was shot,” Miller said.
Another neighbor said that she heard “maybe one bark before the gunshot.”
That neighbor, Meg Hopkins, told The Post that the dog owner’s girlfriend told her the couple walks the dog every night “and not once had it ever been aggressive toward someone or bitten them.”
Meanwhile, locals created a makeshift memorial for the dead animal where its blood stains could still be seen on the sidewalk Tuesday.
One local put up a drawing of a dog with wings that read “Rest in Peace.”