![\"Police](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/d531cc99-024e-41ae-82e5-92f0f02783ce.jpg\")
<\/p>\nLATEST\u00a0|\u00a0<\/p>\n
Police at the scene of an incident where a dog has been shot in the Scrabo area of Newtownards on April 3rd 2025 – Photo by Kevin Scott<\/p>\n
Police have shot a dog \u2013 described by a local councillor as an \u201cXL bully type dog\u201d \u2013 after it injured two people in Newtownards.<\/p>\n
Officers responded to reports of a dog that attacked a man and woman in the Rathmullan Drive area today.<\/p>\n
Emergency services responded to the incident in the Scrabo estate shortly after 6.30pm. .<\/p>\n
The pair were given first aid for their injuries at the scene before being taken to hospital.<\/p>\n
The dog was \u201cdestroyed\u201d by specially trained officers due to being a risk to the public.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Police at the scene of an incident where a dog has been shot in the Scrabo area of Newtownards on April 3rd 2025 – Photo by Kevin Scott<\/p>\n
News Catch Up – Thursday 4 April <\/p>\n
Several officers attended including the PSNI dog unit.<\/p>\n
A PSNI spokesman said: \u201cPolice attended a property in the Rathmullen Drive area of Newtownards on Thursday 3rd April, following a report that a dog attacked a man and a woman.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe man and woman were given first aid for their injuries at the scene before being conveyed to hospital. The dog was destroyed by specially trained officers, due to the risk to the public.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs is normal procedure, the office of the Police Ombudsman have been informed.\u201d<\/p>\n
DUP councillor Stephen McIlveen expressed his concern at the incident, saying it was \u201cworrying news coming from the Scrabo this evening, with an XL bully type dog having to be killed by armed police\u201d.<\/p>\n
“I’m hoping that no one is seriously injured. It’s terribly sad that an animal has been killed in this way, but a heavily populated area where there are young children is not a suitable place for dogs such as these that are known to pose such a risk,\u201d added the DUP Group Leader on Ards and North Down Borough Council.<\/p>\n
It has been illegal since the start of the year to own an XL bully in Northern Ireland without an exemption certificate.<\/p>\n
For the dogs to be eligible for exemption, they must be microchipped, licensed and have third-party insurance.<\/p>\n
The dogs must also be neutered as part of the exemption conditions, although this can be completed after the application is submitted.<\/p>\n
XL bully-type dogs were added to the list of restricted breeds in Northern Ireland last summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LATEST\u00a0|\u00a0 Police at the scene of an incident where a dog has been shot in the Scrabo area…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[1384,12,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-2140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-down-news","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114277326746665667","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}