John Jefferson
Conner Brackin (McNairy County Sheriff’s Office).
A Tennessee man returned home to the tragic sight of seven of his dogs dead, one of them only alive because he hid from the shooter — allegedly a police deputy.
Conner Brackin, a 24-year-old police deputy with the McNairy County Sheriff’s Office, was arrested and charged with aggravated animal cruelty on Tuesday following an investigation by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. On Nov. 4, Brackin responded to an “animal welfare concern” in Bethel Springs, a city located around 100 miles east of Memphis. According to the affidavit, Brackin spoke with the person who made the complaint about multiple dogs on the neighboring property, some in pens, some in two different trailers. Brackin released one of the dogs from a pen and then “loaded his service rifle and pistol and began firing into the campers at the dogs.”
He allegedly fired eight times, killing seven dogs.
The dogs’ owner, Kevin Dismuke, was not home at the time of the shooting. When he arrived home, the body of one of his dogs was by the front door. As he entered his home, Dismuke didn’t hear his other dogs and, one by one, found them dead.
“I found our old dog Gator laying between the beds,” he told Memphis CBS affiliate WREG. “I ain’t heard Jasmine. I ain’t heard Max. So, I stepped back inside the trailer and I found Jasmine laying back there by the bathroom door. They’re all dead — all but Max. He’d hid under the bed.”
The McNairy County Sheriff’s Office stated Brackin observed two dogs in “extremely poor health” and one was “already deceased.” After looking for the dogs’ owner, Brackin let a neighbor take one of the dogs and said that he had been “cleared to put down the remaining animals safely by my supervisor.”
Dismuke disputed the claim when he talked to WREG, saying, “They were told the property was abandoned and the dogs were malnourished. I got the veterinary paperwork in my truck from three weeks ago. They all had a clean bill of health on them.”
A devastated Dismuke added, “I don’t care what you do. I don’t care if you give me $10, if you give me $10 million. You can’t replace my dogs.”
The TBI investigation into Brackin kicked off Nov. 7. Following their investigation, Brackin was fired and arrested on felony charges — seven counts of aggravated cruelty to animals and eight counts of reckless endangerment.
Brackin was fired by the McNairy County Sheriff’s office and turned himself in. He was later booked into the McNairy County Jail.
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