A Tennessee man claimed his dog accidentally shot him. (Image: Getty)
A dog owner in was shot in the leg by his own pet while he was relaxing in bed. The Memphis Police Department responded to an “accidental injury” call at the man’s home on Whitney Avenue just before 4am on Monday. Jerald Kirkwood, 39, claimed that his one-year-old pit bull Oreo jumped onto the bed and accidentally triggered the gun, grazing his top left thigh, according to .
He reportedly told officers: “[Oreo] jumped on the bed and got his paw stuck in the trigger guard and ended up hitting the trigger.” After the shooting, a woman who was also in bed with Kirkwood at the time reportedly left the premises with the weapon, while he was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
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The pit bull jumped on the bed, accidentally triggering the gun. (Image: Getty)
The unnamed woman, who was woken up by the gunshot noise, told Fox 13: “The dog is a playful dog, and he likes to jump around and stuff like that, and it just went off.”
The Memphis Police Department discovered “one spent shell casings on the front room floor”, according to PEOPLE.
Police added: “When officers asked the victim where the weapon was he advised that the female friend took it when she left.”
To prevent such incidents in the future, the woman advised that gun owners should “keep the safety on or use a trigger lock” to avoid unintentional shootings.
[REVEAL]
This is not the first time a pet has been involved in an accidental shooting. A man in Kansas was killed in 2023 during a hunting trip when a dog stepped on and triggered a rifle.
Years prior, in 2017, a pheasant hunter in Iowa was wounded when a dog accidentially stepped on the trigger guard of a shotgun.
One year later, a man in New Mexico was shot by his rottweiler mix after his paw got stuck in the trigger of a rifle, causing his owner to be shot in the back and break several bones.