SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KCRA) – A California woman is mourning the loss of her dog, and she says a postal carrier is to blame for its death.
It happened in early April. Aranza Gutierrez said her dog, a Yorkie-schnauzer mix, got out while she was collecting the trash.
A garage camera shows the moment her dog runs out of the home and toward a U.S. Postal worker, barking.
The mail carrier puts the mail bag in between them, yells at the dog while putting mail in the mailbox and then keeps walking.
But the dog keeps barking and follows them.
It is then that the mail carrier appears to pick up a rock and throw it at the dog.
“That was my dog. My baby,” Gutierrez said. “His name was Baby Bones.”
Gutierrez said her dog came back into the house and started seizing. Her family took him to the emergency vet, where they learned his skull was fractured.
“And his brain was already inflamed by then, so he was comatose by the time we were at the vet,” she said.
Within hours, Gutierrez said she had to make the tough call to put her dog down.
“It’s just complete silence in the house, waking up and like my bed is empty. It’s just really … It’s been really depressing,” she said.
Now, she holds on to the golf ball-sized rock she says the mail carrier threw.
“He can be annoying and stuff, but he was like a really small dog that had, like, no teeth,” Gutierrez said. “So, he wouldn’t have gone up to bite her or anything.”
KCRA3 sent the video to the U.S. Postal Service.
They’re reviewing the incident and said, “The United States Postal Service holds its employees to high standards of conduct, and any actions that conflict with these values are taken seriously.”
“I’m not really out for revenge. I don’t really need anything back. I just want some type of a sense of justice,” Gutierrez said.
Like covering the vet bills and the cost of cremation.
After nine years, Gutierrez said this goodbye has been tough, especially since she believes it was caused by a 30-second interaction that should have never happened.
“I walked him every day. I slept with him. He was my best friend, basically. He was my baby,” she said.
The Postal Service said its mail carriers are trained on how to handle dogs if they feel threatened on their route.
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