‘A brave boy’: San Diego police dog gets 100 stitches after being stabbed during takedown

A San Diego police dog is recovering after undergoing surgery and receiving more than 100 stitches to repair wounds after being stabbed by a man accused of trespassing at a business Monday.

Officers called to the local business around 11:30 a.m. found a 35-year-old man. They tried to talk to him, police said, but the man refused to give them any information and kept reaching for a bag.

The officers tried to put the man in handcuffs, whereupon police said he punched the officers and ran. He then entered “military property” and climbed onto the top of a shipping container and refused to come down, according to police.

He remained atop the shipping container, waving a knife, for four hours, police said.

Negotiators who were summoned eventually were able to get the man to come down from the container, but he refused to drop the knife, police said. That’s when Officer Javier Morales released his canine partner, Titan.

The man stabbed the police dog in the side.

“A team of officers sprang into action to help their partner & arrest the man. Titan was rushed to an animal hospital for stab wounds to his side causing a laceration to his colon in 3 places,” the department said on Twitter.

Six to eight inches of the dog’s colon were surgically removed, and he received more than 100 stitches, the department said.

“We are grateful Titan is on the road to recovery,” the department said in a tweet. “He’s a brave boy!”

The man was booked into jail on suspicion of felony resisting arrest, resisting an executive order and harming a police dog. He was being held in lieu of $50,000 bail on Wednesday.

On Wednesday night, the department posted a short video on Facebook showing Morales and the dog, which had an IV line attached to its front paw and a shaved midsection. There is no sound, but the officer waves at the camera as he lies on his side next to the dog near a crate. He also is shown walking Titan in an outdoor area.

“He is doing well and in good spirits,” the department wrote on the Facebook post.

Kucher writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.