New Zealand police surrounded a property in Wellington after an armed man shot and killed a police dog named Gazza in a dramatic encounter where one officer had to jump out of a second-storey window to safety.
The armed offenders squad was negotiating with the man to put down his weapons and peacefully leave the house on Friday afternoon.
In March four police officers were shot and wounded during a siege near the rural town of Kawerau in the Bay of Plenty.
Gazza was the 24th police dog killed in the line of duty in New Zealand, the force said.
The German shepherd graduated in 2013 with his handler, Constable Josh Robertson, and had worked in Wellington ever since, tracking and catching offenders.
He was popular at schools, sports grounds and open days in the capital.
Gazza was previously involved in an incident where he was choked by an offender in 2014 after tracking him for three and a half kilometres through Wainuiomata.
A memorial service will be held for Gazza at the police dog training centre.
The Wellington police district commander, Superintendent Sam Hoyle, said the force would grieve for the dog as they would any other colleague.
“It’s with great sadness that I can advise one of our police dogs was shot and killed today in the line of duty while executing a routine search warrant in Porirua,” Superintendent Hoyle said in a statement.
“While at the address, a man presented a firearm and the police dog was shot and subsequently killed. Two officers immediately removed the dog’s body from the house and one officer jumped to safety out of a second-storey window.”
New Zealand’s first fully trained police dog, Miska, was brought over by ship from England in 1956, with a handful of puppies and adolescent dogs in training.
For the first decade the New Zealand dog squad was short on equipment, and vehicles, and did not wear a uniform.
Since then the canine police force has grown to more than a hundred dog teams country-wide, and has provided training for dog squads in Australia, the Pacific Islands and some Asian countries.
Police dogs attend around 40,000 call-outs a year and suffer around five injuries a year, according to the force.
The last police dog killed in New Zealand was Gage, who took a bullet for his handler in 2010 during a drugs raid in Christchurch.
