(Lawrenceville, Georgia-AP) January 18, 2006 - A police dog has been impounded after authorities say the animal jumped a six-foot fence and attacked a nine-year-old girl attending a Girl Scout meeting. Gwinnett County, Georgia, police say Courtney Imoukhuede of Lawrenceville was attacked at her neighbor's house January 9th while she was attending the Scout meeting.
Courtney received five bite marks on her lower back and several more on her arm from the two-year-old dog. The female Belgian Malinois is a bomb-sniffing dog for the DeKalb County Police Department.
DeKalb County Police Officer John Hansen is the dog's handler and kept the animal at his house in Lawrenceville in the Knollwood Lakes subdivision. Police cited the officer with two misdemeanors: failure to restrain his animal and public nuisance/attacks without provocation.
The dog has been impounded in DeKalb County.
Gwinnett County Police Department spokesman Darren Moloney says the girl was in the backyard of the neighbor's home when she was attacked.
Bomb dogs are kept by the officers assigned to them, not at police stations. DeKalb police are trying to determine why the dog jumped the fence and attacked the girl.
DeKalb County Police Department spokesman Corey Hughes says bomb dogs are not trained to be aggressive or to bite .
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. NoNonsense English offers this material non-commercially for research and educational purposes. I believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, i.e. the media service or newspaper which first published the article online and which is indicated at the top of the article unless otherwise specified.