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‘Heard the gunshot.’ Texas family says they saw dog killed while checking home camera

A family in Texas is grieving after they say their dog was fatally shot in their backyard while they were gone camping.

Jessica Millsaps and her family were spending Mother’s Day weekend at Speegleville Park on Lake Waco when they decided to check in on Jack, their 18-month-old golden retriever, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported.

They pulled up the feed to the security camera at their Axtell home and noticed Jack wasn’t playing in the yard like he usually does, according to the newspaper.

The family tried to call his name, but the dog wouldn’t get up, so they rewound the video footage to when he laid down, Millsaps wrote Saturday in a Facebook post.

They were stunned by what they saw — Jack had been shot in their backyard, no more than 6 yards from the door, she said.

“We rolled the camera back (and) we heard the gunshot loud and clear. We saw him fall down and he didn’t get back up,” Millsaps told KCEN.

She said her children were devastated.

“My 9-year-old just lost it,” she told the Tribune-Herald. “He fell to the ground. It was definitely one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was tell my son that his furry best friend had died.”

Millsaps said she filed a report with police and wants justice for her family’s beloved pet.

Officials with the McLennan County Sheriff Office are investigating.

“The dog was shot in the backyard and we are investigating very thoroughly. Hopefully we will be able to determine who the shooter was,” Sheriff Parnell McNamara told KCEN. “We have assigned a couple of people in our criminal investigation division that are working on this.”

Millsaps said her family will remember Jack as a “loyal and loving” companion.

“To some this may be ‘just a dog,’ but to us, it’s our family,” she wrote. “Our kids didn’t deserve this. Jack didn’t deserve this.”

Anyone with information is asked to contact the sheriff’s office at (254) 757-5059.

Axtell is roughly 15 miles northeast of Waco.

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