He wasn’t moving fast enough so he tried to reach into his pocket to get his ID. They slammed him up against the car and they put cuffs on him. ...
Sunshine, responding to his distress, jumped up on the hood trying to help him ...
“She was just doing her job, licking me and trying to calm me down,” Rohrer said. “The cops starting yelling at her and me, telling me to get her to settle down, but they wouldn’t allow me to physically get control of her.”
Rohrer said Sunshine nipped at one of the officer’s ankles as she was hopping down from the hood of the car, prompting the officer to tase her.
“We’re out here screaming, ‘Don’t shoot the dog! Don’t shoot the dog!’” Huffman said.
Huffman said Sunshine ran to a nearby store with one of the taser prongs dangling off her body while police took Rohrer to the back of the car and “slammed him on the pavement.”
As he was taken away by police for booking, Rohrer said he begged the officers to let Sunshine come with him. He cited a North Carolina statute that affords people with disabilities the right to keep their service dogs with them, especially in cases where the individual’s health is at risk.
“They laughed at me,” he said. “I begged them to bring her to me or to give her to an officer to take with them but they wouldn’t listen, they didn’t care.”
Rohrer never saw Sunshine again. While his friend and fellow veteran Dave Dowell was able to get his hands on the service dog that night, she later slipped her leash and ran away while Rohrer was still in jail,.
After nearly two days, Sunshine was found in nearby Shelby, where Dowell lives. She had been hit by a car and killed. Losing Sunshine and facing the allegedly rough and careless treatment of the police left Rohrer feeling hopeless enough that he “just wanted to die,” he said.
Pvt. First Class Joshua Rohrer (right) and two of his fellow soldiers pose for a photo in a 642nd Military Intelligence Battalion's photo album, owned by Rohrer. (Courtesy of Joshua Rohrer/ Facebook)
