Tamaqua, Penn. (AP) -- Police officer Scott Michalesko says he thought he was doing the humane thing when he shot Whiskers, a 15-year-old pet schnauzer reported hit by a car one frigid January evening.
But now not everyone agrees.
The dog’s outraged owner complained, residents questioned Michalesko’s judgment and his superiors began an investigation. A few weeks after Whiskers’ death, the dog was exhumed for the animal version of an autopsy.
Debate swirled in rural Rush Township, about 70 miles northwest of Philadelphia: Could this dog have been saved?
After a series of disciplinary hearings, township officials concluded Michalesko had acted recklessly and fired him. Now the veteran police officer is suing to get his $14.42-an-hour job back in a case his attorney calls “ridiculous” and “bizarre.”
“It was 4 degrees out, the dog was pretty much freezing and wasn’t able to move, and (Michalesko) just used his best judgment,” said the attorney, David Washington.
Not so fast, said Whiskers’ owner, Nancy Meiser, pointing to a necropsy report that showed the dog to be in perfectly good health when Michalesko shot him. The officer should have tried harder to find the dog’s owner -- or at least taken him to an animal hospital, she said.
“I’m still sick over it,” said Meiser, 49, who adopted Whiskers about five years ago.
The sad tale began around 7 p.m. Jan. 10, when Whiskers wriggled loose from his chain behind the home Meiser shares with her 84-year-old father.
A short time later, Michalesko, who was on patrol that night, got a call from Schuylkill County 911 that a dog had been hit on Fairview Road. The officer drove there and spotted the animal about 10 feet from the side of the road. The dog was lying down, not moving much, he said.
Michalesko called the dispatcher and read the numbers on the dog tag, but a communications glitch prevented the 911 center from being able to determine the name of the owner. Michalesko knocked on a few doors, without success. He asked the 911 center whether there were any 24-hour animal hospitals in the area, but the dispatcher said the closest one was in Allentown -- 35 miles away. (As it turned out, there was one nearby.)
The schnauzer was not mangled or bleeding, but Michalesko said he believed the dog’s back or hip was broken.
“I walked over to the dog, stood there (and thought), ‘Why isn’t somebody out here looking for their dog?’ Michalesko recalled.
“I did a prayer, I took my weapon out, and I discharged one round. I re-holstered, knelt down on the ground and I said another prayer, petting the dog as this thing is dying so it would know there is somebody there with it,” said Michalesko, 46, choking back tears.
Meiser, who had been out to dinner when Whiskers got loose, searched frantically for the dog all that night and the following day. She was at work the third day when her father called with the news: Whiskers had been killed by a police officer. She rushed home, devastated.
Residents packed the monthly supervisors’ meeting a few weeks later, demanding answers and worrying about their own pets. A distraught Meiser stood up and read a statement. “What gives this officer the right to take another life?” she asked.
Michalesko, on the force 10 years, was suspended Jan. 29 and fired March 19 for alleged negligence and conduct unbecoming an officer.
Meiser’s attorney, Melissa Rudas, who is preparing a lawsuit against Michalesko, said the officer was heard laughing about the incident on a 911 recording. “This guy scares me as a police officer, quite frankly,” she said.
But Michalesko said the recording captured the black humor that officers often exhibit under stress. He said a fellow officer had been trying to cheer him up.
Township solicitor Paul Domalakes admits to being nonplussed by the Whiskers affair.
“It blows me away,” he said. “I was in my first day on the job, show up at my first township meeting, and there’s TV cameras and everything else there. For Whiskers. I thought, ‘For heaven’s sake.”’