The shooter had four legs.
That was the initial conclusion of an investigation by police in Shillington, Pennsylvania, who responded to a call about a shooting Tuesday night.
A 53-year-old man had been shot in the back and injured by an unknown assailant, the man鈥檚 son said in a 911 call.
Cpl. Michael Schoone of the Shillington Police Department told WFMZ, a local news station, on Wednesday that the man said he had been cleaning his shotgun and set it down on the bed.
A few investigative questions ensued. Eventually, police said, a four-legged suspect emerged.
The officers, he said, were informed that 鈥渁 dog had jumped up onto the bed, causing the shotgun to go off, which openly struck the male.鈥�
鈥淗e鈥檚 not sure what stage of cleaning he was in at the time, so it鈥檚 unsure if the dog鈥檚 paw may have gotten caught inside the trigger and the safety was off or if there was some sort of manufacturer malfunction,鈥� Schoone told WFMZ.
鈥淚t looks like it was an accident, but it鈥檚 still being investigated,鈥� he said.
The man, who was not identified by authorities, received treatment at Reading Hospital. His condition was not available on Friday, a spokesperson said.
No other information had been released about the dog, such as the name and breed. The police in Shillington, a borough in Berks County that is more than 30 miles southwest of Allentown, did not respond to multiple calls and emails on Friday.
The shooting generated reaction from gun safety advocates, as well as canine allies.
National media organizations were having a field day.
鈥淕rowl play is not suspected,鈥� read the first sentence of the story in The New York Post.
The nonprofit Gun Violence Archive recorded the event as an accidental or negligent discharge of a firearm, among the 1,156 unintentional shootings in the United States it has recorded in 2025, as of this week.
Unusual, dog-involved shootings are not unheard-of in the United States.
In March, a Memphis, Tennessee, man told police that he was grazed in the thigh by a bullet fired from a gun when his puppy, Oreo, got his paw stuck in the trigger, local news stations reported.
In 2018, Matt Branch, a Louisiana State University football player, was shot in the leg when a Labrador retriever named Titus stepped on the safety mechanism and trigger of his shotgun which had been placed on a truck bed during a hunting trip. His leg was amputated.
In 2011, a duck hunter in Utah was shot in the buttocks when his dog stepped on a shotgun, news reports said at the time.
This article originally appeared in .
漏 2025 The New York Times Company