An Anacostia woman is accusing the Metropolitan Police Department of lying about the circumstances surrounding an officer’s shooting of her dog outside her home last month. The dog, Sae’Red, was put down later that day.

The incident occurred Nov. 10 around 1:44 a.m. on the 1400 block of Morris Road SE, according to an official police report. The report says police were in the area investigating the sound of gunshots after a juvenile said his mother was shot nearby. During their search, a 40- to 50-lbs. brown pitbull mix “charged aggressively” at an officer from the woman’s porch and bit the officer’s left leg, according to the report.

The police report says “the dog was injured as a result of police actions,” but doesn’t specify how or the total number of officers present. (The woman, Shannon Brown, says there were about 10.) The report notes the dog was injured “on the public sidewalk space.”

But Brown says her dog never bit the officer.

“That’s a lie,” says Brown, who is 39. “All she did was bark. … I saw it all.”

Brown says she was sitting in her living room when the incident happened. In her telling, the main door of her home was open with the screen door closed. Sae’Red ran out through the screen door when flashlights shone into her living room from the street, Brown says. (The police report says the dog “elighted from the open door” of the house.)

Suddenly, an officer fired three shots at her dog, Brown says. One bullet missed, but two hit the dog in its back and ear, she says.

In response to detailed questions about the incident from DCist, a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police Department said the department can’t corroborate Brown’s claims. “This case remains under internal investigation and we are unable to comment outside of what is listed in the incident report,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “The officers’ body worn cameras will be reviewed in order to determine if the officers involved followed appropriate police procedures.”

D.C. police have fatally shot pitbulls before. It happened in Southeast in 2018, when officers were carrying out a search warrant, and in 2017, when officers were responding to a domestic disturbance call, according to news reports. MPD officers also killed a pitbull in Northwest in 2016, while responding to a call about another dog biting a woman.

Brown and her attorney have requested body camera footage of the incident, but say they have yet to receive any. (Brown hasn’t filed a lawsuit.) The police spokesperson said the department doesn’t have a timeline for when its investigation will be completed.

Before the police left, MPD officer Dalton Griffin issued Brown a $25 ticket for having an unleashed dog. Brown shared a photo of the ticket with DCist.

Aristotle Theresa, an attorney representing Brown, says he wants to know why the officers who were canvassing the area for gunfire allegedly shone flashlights at her home. He says he hopes body camera footage will reveal more about what happened that night.

“It’s because I’m a Black woman living in the Southeast,” Brown says of her dog’s death. “I feel like this wouldn’t have happened if I was a white woman.”

Around 8 a.m. the next morning, Brown says, Maris Schneeman, a humane officer with the Humane Rescue Alliance who was not present during the incident, came to her home and drove Sae’Red to the vet. Brown rode the train and met them there.

At the vet, Brown says she was told life-saving surgery for her 17-month-old dog would cost upward of $14,000. She decided to have the dog euthanized that afternoon.

“I didn’t have [the money], but I would have paid it in a heartbeat,” she says. Brown says she took in Sae’Red in March, after finding the puppy “in bad shape” in the alley behind her home.

“She wasn’t just a dog, she was a support animal for me during COVID,” she says.