A 15-year-old Abbotsford boy is nursing wounds today that were inflicted by an Abbotsford police dog.
His family is angry about the incident that began when Daniel Dundass spent Saturday night at his friend's home on Marshall Road near Emerson Street.
He and two friends snuck out a window in the middle of the night to light off a couple of bottle rockets across the street at Bakerview elementary school, Daniel's dad Kevin Dundass said Monday.
But when they were returning home around 4 a.m. police arrived.
Two boys scrambled back to the home but the third couldn't get into the house so he slid under the parked van in the driveway.
"They were a little nervous because they had set off the fireworks," Kevin said Monday.
Daniel said he was hiding under the van when he saw the police checking out a car a couple of doors down the street.
"They went over and checked the car first," he said. "That's when they brought out the dog."
He said that the police officer told him to come out from under the van and, when he did and stood in front of him, he was told to get on the ground. That's when the dog, the boy said, started attacking him.
"I complied and got on the ground then the dog jumped on me and started biting me," Daniel said. "It just started biting me and I was thinking, 'Why is the police officer letting the dog do this?' "
Daniel's friend Danny Tait was one of the two that got back into the house and he remembers hearing the confrontation between his buddy and the police officer.
"I heard screaming for a good 20 seconds," the 19-year-old Tait said. "First I heard, 'Get on the . . . ground!'
"Then I heard screaming and 'Get it off of me!' "
Tait then saw his friend escorted to the police car where he was handcuffed and put inside the car.
The police said they were called to the neighbourhood after area residents called in to report three suspicious males lurking in the area.
Abbotsford Police Department spokesman Const. Shinder Kirk said police believed the Volkswagen Golf had been broken into and the stereo was stolen.
"The passenger door was ajar," Kirk said. "The stereo was missing."
But, Kirk said, a subsequent interview of the car owner revealed that the stereo hadn't been in the car for months.
Kevin and Rose Dundass, Daniel's mother, are furious their son was attacked by the dog then brought home in handcuffs when he hadn't done anything criminal.
"OK, the boys were out late, setting off bottle rockets and being bad teenagers," Rose said. "But I don't think that justifies what happened to them.
"It was just an over-use of force," Rose said. "He's not a big boy. I don't know why they used force."
Kirk said the dog is trained to go into places and pull suspects out.
If a member of the public lodges a complaint about police conduct, Kirk said an investigation is launched.
"We're very open about these things," he said.
Rose said the family is exploring its legal options.
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