“Ow! Ow! Ow!, you hurt my eye,” a nine-year-old girl screams after Kansas police officer Dexter Betts fired two shots from his gun.
Betts, who claimed the dog attacked him, was fired after he wounded the child instead of the dog.
Video from Betts’ body camera, which was released Thursday by the Wichita Eagle, shows Betts shining his flashlight on the girl seconds before he shoots at the dog in front of her.
It happened on December 30 after Betts and another officer responded to a call from the girl’s mother, Danielle Maples, about her husband who was suicidal.
When officers arrived, Maples’ husband was standing in the driveway with his hands up, unarmed.
Footage shows officers walking up to the house, which they later claimed to enter looking for a gun.
One officer carefully opens the door and walks into a living room full of frightened children who can be heard crying.
Two boys are standing, watching television, while the nine-year-old girl sits on the floor by the couch.
Betts looks around in a few rooms near the front of the home.
“Whoa, whoa, we got a dog in here,” he can be heard saying.
That’s when a barking, 35 pound English Bull Terrier named Chevy enters the room.
Betts fires two shots.
“Ow! Ow! Ow!, you hurt my eye! the girls screams in agony.
“Ow! Ow!”
Fragments from Betts’ gun ricocheted off the floor, hitting the dog and the girl.
Betts can be heard saying “shots fired” and telling the kids to get out of the room.
“Dog inside. Attacked up.” Betts claims after someone asks him what happened.
Meanwhile, the girl cries in agony as officers leave the home.
The girl’s three brothers are waiting in the driveway, clearly traumatized by the ordeal.
“We have to take my daughter to the hospital,” the girl’s father says while holding his daughter in his arms.
Betts then walks back to his patrol car.
“What the hell happened?” another officer asks him.
“In the house . . . we were trying to go get the gun, looking for the gun, and the dog came out from one of the back rooms,” he tells her.
“Did he attack you?”
“Yeah,” he replies, adding that the dog didn’t actually get him.
Betts, who was fired from the Wichita Police Department less than a month after the incident, now faces a felony charge of aggravated battery.
Betts is the first Wichita police officer in the last two decades to face criminal charges from an on-duty shooting that has resulted in an injury or death.
Even though video shows the dog never attacked him, Betts defense attorney says his client was “not reckless” but instead was attempting to “avoid being attacked by this vicious dog.”
The family’s lawyer, Charley O’Hara, said the nine-year-old girl believed Betts was “shooting directly” at her when he opened fire.
Maples says her daughter will be left with external and psychological scars from the shooting.
“The mother said to me after seeing the video “I’ve always taught my children to trust the police, and I don’t think any four of those children will ever trust the police again,” O’Hara explained.
Betts’ trial is set for August 20.
He has entered a plea of not guilty.
