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Sunday, June 12, 2022

The Patrick Wetter Police-Involved Shooting Case

     At three-thirty in the afternoon of Tuesday January 6, 2015 a drunk or drugged-up 25-year-old gang member named Patrick Wetter kicked in the front door of a young adult group home in Stockton, California. Residents of the home barricaded themselves into a bedroom and called the police.

     Three police officers accompanied by Rocky, a Dutch Shepherd who had been on the force five years, arrived at the scene to find Wetter armed with a knife and trying to break into one of the group home's bedrooms. The officers ordered the crazed man to surrender. When Wetter ignored the command the K-9 handler deployed Rocky to subdue him. The intruder responded by stabbing Rocky in the shoulder.

     When the K-9 officer tried to retrieve his wounded dog Wetter threatened  him with the knife. That's when the other two officers opened fire, hitting Wetter several times. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.

      Six months earlier Stockton police officers had arrested Wetter for carrying a concealed knife and resisting arrest. The gang member posted his bond and walked out of the county jail.

     Officers rushed Rocky to an emergency veterinary hospital in Stockton. A veterinarian at that facility concluded that Rocky required surgery. After spending the night in Stockton, Rocky was transferred to a veterinary hospital in Sacramento where he had the operation. The surgery was successful and Rocky recovered from his wounds.

     The two officers who shot Patrick Wetter to death were placed on three-day administrative leave. The officers were returned to duty after the shooting was ruled justifiable. 

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