Police shoot much-loved pet dead Surfing invention making waves around the world
A family is traumatised after police shot a dog dead just metres away from the owner’s daughter during a search warrant sparked over a plastic gun.
The Chand family’s beloved pet Budz was shot twice in the leg and then once in the head by police officers executing the warrant at their home in Papatoetoe, South Auckland, in September.
Vaishaali Chand had been at home alone with Budz, a 19-month-old staffordshire bull terrier. The sound of police surrounding the property alerted the dog, which began barking.
‘‘I thought it may have been students passing by, I thought I would go and and hold him to bring inside,’’ she said.
With officers out front and one approaching from the backyard, Vaishaali begged them to let her restrain the barking dog.
But the request was ignored, she said.
‘‘I was metres from Budz saying, ‘let me hold my dog, let me hold my dog’, but the one officer with the gun just shot him,’’ Vaishaali said.
‘‘I was in shock, I walked forward to go and help him but he kept telling me to get inside.’’
Officers found nothing inside, she said.
Vaishaali said the police raided the home after they saw a photo on her younger brother’s phone, in which he was posing with a fake plastic gun which police mistook for a real firearm.
The incident has left Vaishaali’s mother Uma – the dog’s owner – frightened in her own home and she now rarely ventures outside.
Uma said Budz was ‘‘like my own baby, he went everywhere with me’’.
‘‘I just can’t take it . . . I told them to pass a message to the cop who fired: he didn’t just kill my dog, he killed me right there.’’
Uma accepted police had a job to do, but she questioned why they had to use lethal force instead of restraining way.
‘‘Why did they kill an innocent animal? He was in his backyard. He’s a dog, he doesn’t understand if you’re cops . . . or a normal person, he was in his boundary.’’
In a statement, Superintendent Jill Rogers of Auckland police said a ‘‘large dog’’ had ‘‘charged at several officers’’. the dog in some other
‘‘One of the officers had to assess their tactical options and consequently shot at the dog to protect themselves as they feared for their safety,’’ the statement read.
Rogers said equipped to deal situations.
‘‘A high-risk environment requires staff to sometimes resort police were with a range of to using their firearm in order to keep other members of the community and themselves safe’’.
She said police were unable to comment further on the incident following an internal review.
The family said they were waiting for a report from police before deciding if they would lay a complaint with the Independent Police Conduct Authority. A beer, a Dunedin idea for device.
Ross McCarthy is the man behind AirWave, the first machine able to mimic any wave in the world and suitable for training pro surfers and recreational use.
‘‘We are the first company in the world that can manipulate a standing wave while it is going.’’
He said the prototype had been in the making for more than six years and had once completely flooded a building.
McCarthy said he got the idea for AirWave while having a few beers by the Hawea River, near Wanaka.
He saw how a rock and the water current created a ‘‘wave’’ above the river.
‘‘I saw that and said ‘s... make that into a wave’.’’
McCarthy, who studied for a masters in industrial design at Otago Polytechnic, pitched his idea to investors about six years ago.
Three of his major shareholders were linked to Snow Planet in Auckland, and the prototype also received financial support from Callaghan Innovation. The government agency pumped in more on discovering the height and angle of the waves could be adjusted.
That meant surfers using AirWave could experience a righthand surf break, a left-hand break, barrelling and front-on waves, a process expected to be reduced to seconds rather than the current minute between changes.
And it has had the ‘‘thumbs up’’ from top young surfers and bodyboarders, McCarthy said.
Surfing will become an Olympic event at the 2020 Games in Tokyo, and popularity in the sport is river and a rock gave a industrial designer the a revolutionary surfing I could expected to soar.
McCarthy was keen on having a dedicated surf training facility in a city known for its cold water surf.
Airwave used 200,000 litres of recycled fresh water and was powered by a large pump capable of adjusting to the skill level of the surfer, whether it be a 5-year-old or a pro.
It differed to surfing machines seen on cruise ships which produced the same wave on a hard surface, ‘‘so when you fall off it you feel it’’.
‘‘The easiest way to describe it is imagine surfing on a wave on top of a bouncy castle.’’
McCarthy revealed the product – which is pitched at amusement parks, water parks, shopping malls and cruise ships – at a trade show in the US several weeks ago.
He expected the project to break even if his first two sales went conditional. Not a bad start for a man who used to work 40 hours a week sanding floors to make ends meet, and another 40 hours a week spent tinkering on his project.
‘‘You can either give up and keep going, but we kept going and here we are with a pretty awesome toy in the back shed.’’