‘I thought I was going to lose my life’: Jadarrius Rose describes being attacked by police dog in Ohio

By Isabel Rosales and Zoe Sottile, CNN

Jadarrius Rose, the unarmed Black man who was attacked by a police dog in Ohio on July 4, described being “terrified” and fearing for his life during the assault in an interview with CNN.

Rose, 23, was driving a commercial semi-truck when he failed to pull over for an inspector trying to stop him for a missing mud flap, according to the Ohio Highway Patrol case report and footage released by the agency. […]

Rose told CNN that he first called his mother from the truck. “She told me if I know I didn’t do anything wrong, to pull over, so that’s what I did,” he said. Looking in his rearview mirror, he saw responding police officers “had guns pointed at me, so I didn’t feel safe at all.”

He then called 911 to ask what he should do. “I was just trying to figure out if they could help me,” he said. “I was scared, i didn’t understand why they had guns pointed at me, I didn’t know the reason for them pulling me over at the time.”

Rose, still on the phone with 911, said he drove back on the highway, continuing what became a three-county pursuit.

Rose said the 911 operator instructed him to follow officers’ directions, so he ultimately pulled over and exited the truck with his hands up. He said that while a state trooper instructed him to walk toward him, a police officer from the Circleview Police Department told him to “stay on the ground or you’ll get bit” – conflicting instructions that left him unsure what to do.

“I just stopped in the middle, because I didn’t know what was gonna happen,” he said. “I was afraid that something would happen, and it did happen.”

Despite repeated warnings from a state trooper to not release the K-9, former officer Ryan Speakman turned the dog on Rose. It’s not clear if Speakman heard the trooper’s warnings.

Video shows that at the moment of the dog attack, Rose was on his knees.

“When the dog was biting me I just was terrified,” Rose said. “I thought I was going to lose my life. I was in pain. I really couldn’t see what the other officers was doing because the dog was biting me and I was just in fear of my life. And I just was screaming in pain, and I just didn’t want to die. Like, I didn’t want to die in the hands of police.”

Read more about Rose’s terrifying experience in the original article.

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