The shooter had four legs.
That was the initial conclusion of an investigation by the police in Shillington, Pa., who
responded to a call about a shooting on Tuesday night.
A 53-year old man had been shot in the back and injured by an unknown assailant, the man’s son said in a 911 call.
Cpl. Michael Schoone of the Shillington Police Department told WFMZ, a local news station, on Wednesday that the man said he had been cleaning his shotgun and set it down on the bed.
A few investigative questions ensued. Eventually, the police said, a four-legged suspect emerged.
The officers, he said, were informed that “a dog had jumped up onto the bed, causing the shotgun to go off, which openly struck the male.”
“He’s not sure what stage of cleaning he was in at the time, so it’s unsure if the dog’s paw may have gotten caught inside the trigger and the safety was off or if there was some sort of manufacturer malfunction,” Corporal Schoone told WFMZ.
“It looks like it was an accident, but it’s still being investigated,” he said.
The man, who was not identified by the authorities, received treatment at Reading Hospital. His condition was not available on Friday, a spokeswoman said.
No other information had been released about the shooter, such as the name and breed. The police in Shillington, a borough in Berks County that is more than 30 miles southwest of Allentown, did not respond to multiple calls and emails on Friday.
The shooting generated reaction from gun safety advocates, as well as canine allies.
National media organizations were having a field day.
“Growl play is not suspected,” read the first sentence of the story in The New York Post.
The nonprofit Gun Violence Archive recorded the event as an accidental or negligent discharge of a firearm, among the 1,156 unintentional shootings in the United States it has recorded in 2025, as of this week.
Unusual, dog-involved shootings are not unheard-of in the United States.
In March, a Memphis man told the police that he was grazed in the thigh by a bullet fired from a gun when his puppy, Oreo, got his paw stuck in the trigger, local news stations reported.
In 2018, Matt Branch, a Louisiana State University football player, was shot in the leg when a Labrador retriever named Titus stepped on the safety mechanism and trigger of his shotgun which had been placed on a truck bed during a hunting trip. His leg was amputated.
In 2011, a duck hunter in Utah was shot in the buttocks when his dog stepped on a shotgun, injuring him, news reports said at the time.
Christine Hauser is a Times reporter who writes breaking news stories, features and explainers.
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