By Pauline Repard
San Diego Union-Tribune
SAN DIEGO, Calif. — San Diego police fired bean-bag rounds last night at a man who then stabbed a police dog in City Heights, authorities said.
An officer fired one round from his pistol at the man, but missed. The man was taken to a hospital and treated for a dog bite and bruises.
The confrontation occurred at the Travel Lodge motel on El Cajon Boulevard near 50th Street about 8:45 p.m. Officers were investigating reports that a man had been waving a knife and threatening to stab people.
Officers spotted a man with a knife in one hand on a third-floor landing of the motel. An officer shot him twice with a bean-bag round to disarm him.
Police next radioed that the man was sitting on the landing with the knife still in one hand. They yelled orders at him, unleashed a police dog, and one officer fired a pistol at the man.
Next door at 4 Seasons Food Store, manager Munir Abdullh said he heard two gunshots and looked outside. He saw an officer with a dog in his arms run to a patrol car, put the dog inside, then speed away.
The dog was taken to an animal hospital for treatment of two stab wounds, police said.
Paramedics took the man to Scripps-Mercy Hospital.
Police contacted a man and a woman who said the man had come close to them with his knife, but they were not injured.
An Oceanside police dog was killed on the job Dec. 31 when a man grabbed him and jumped off the San Diego-Coronado Bridge. Cory Byron, 27, accused of leading officers on a pursuit from Oceanside, survived the 200-foot fall, but Stryker, the dog, did not.
Copyright 2008 San Diego Union-Tribune