It was supposed to be Ace’s routine nighttime walk.
It was supposed to be Ace’s routine nighttime walk.
Almost immediately after Justin Fuller walked out of his front door with the 10-year-old goldendoodle under pouring rain one recent Friday night, the dog was shot in the face by officers from Detroit's Wayne State University, who were responding to a neighbor’s request for a wellness check.
Fuller and his mom, Robin Gamble, do not live on campus, but say those particular WSU cops are always patrolling near their complex, so they’re familiar with each other.
“The first call to action was to kill. And I feel like just because of an animal, you wouldn't have done that to a human. So, why would you do it to an animal?” Fuller tells Inside Edition Digital.
“There's a multitude of things that could've happened. I could have ran out to my car for something and because I ran out too fast in the rain, I could have gotten shot. It's just a lot,” continues Fuller.
“I think if he just would've turned around and took a second because really he fired two shots. He missed the first time. So the concerning thing is, had my son ran out, it could have been him. You know what I mean? And I just lost my other son to gun violence in August. So we're still trying to work through all those things, the investigation's open,” Gamble tells Inside Edition Digital.
Gamble’s older son was a victim of gun violence in a domestic dispute last year. She says no one has ever faced charges in his death.
Fuller got Ace as a pup, as a gift for his 10th birthday. He says once the cop shot Ace, the dog darted into the house. His well-being was Fuller’s only concern.
“But the cops eventually ended up coming to my door and the first cop, the thing the cop asked me, he asked me if I was okay and immediately I told him no. I was panicking,” he recalls.
“I was like, ‘No, I'm not okay. You just shot my dog. I'm not okay.’ And that probably wasn't the right response, but I just kept asking him, ‘Can you get help for the dog? Get help for the dog. I don't care about how I feel. Get help for the dog. That's the thing that's hurt. That's what you should be doing.’
And he was like, ‘Well, you got to look up vets in your area and go take them to one.’ And I'm like, okay. And at first I started doing it. I was like, okay. And I started looking up vets, but when you think back about it, you're the officer, you're supposed to be doing it. I was in a panic trying to figure out what to do," Fuller says.
Eventually Gamble’s boyfriend returned home and calmed the situation down. They took Ace to an emergency veterinarian who fitted him with a cone and said Ace will be fine.
Still, this family has a lot of questions surrounding how everything unfolded.
“I can say that Ace is definitely changed in the way he's acting, but I feel like that's only because he's injured. And I think he might be able to be fine, but I don't think anything can erase the trauma that he felt in that moment,” Fuller says.
Gamble says this incident has further traumatized her.
“From what happened to my oldest son and then I'm not a gun fan anyway. I just, yeah, I am, I replay it too because it could have been both of them because the officer missed the first time and bullets do fly and ricochet and where Justin was, if he would've ran out. So, I'm so thankful. But it is traumatizing just to know that, dang, they were right 25 feet outside the door.”
Gamble plans on suing the Wayne State University Police Department and is in the process of securing an attorney.
Inside Edition Digital reached out to the Wayne State University Police Department repeatedly and was told that Chief Holt is no longer speaking on the matter.
The officer who shot Ace reportedly will not face charges.
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