An Arizona family is grieving the death of its beloved emu — accusing cops of snapping the big bird’s neck while lassoing the unusual pet after she escaped from home.
The “awesome” and “fun” 6-foot emu — named Richard before her owners realized she was female — was pictured calmly walking around near her family’s Phoenix home after escaping on Sept. 28, according to Fox 10.
Richard “was just very calm, just wandering around,” onlooker Michael Davis told Fox 10 Phoenix. “Not aggressive at all, not threatening.”
Davis called through the unusual report of “emu on the loose” to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department — then filmed with growing horror as deputies struggled to capture the 6-year-old bird typically only seen in Australia.
His video showed a deputy’s “hands around [her] neck and a rope around its neck at the same time,” Davis told 12 News.
“And everybody that was out here witnessing it said, ‘Is it breathing? Are you choking it?'” he recalled.
The footage showed a deputy grabbing Richard by the neck to try to yank him to the squad car’s open doors — just for the big bird to collapse, with the officers admitting to bystanders that it appeared to no longer be breathing.
The sheriff’s office confirmed to the station that “during the corralling, the bird collapsed and died.”
However, Richard’s owner, Stephanie Moilan, broke down as she told Fox 10 there was “no corralling” when “they killed her.”
“Corralling — I don’t think you need a lasso for that,” she said through tears.
“If you put a lasso around their neck and keep pulling it and yanking them to try and get them to do what you want them to do, you’re going to kill them.
“It was so inappropriate. It was completely unnecessary,” she said through tears.
“Richard was our family and they killed her,” she said of the “just so fun” pet named after David PSade’s character in “Tommy Boy.”
The big bird’s owner said the officers were “thoughtless” — saying that even her “11-year-old son’s first response was, ‘well, did they call animal control? Did they call wildlife response?’”
“I’m really gonna miss her,” she said.
Davis, the neighbor who filmed the encounter with the bird, also said he believes police were heavy-handed in their response.
“I don’t think that it needed to happen the way it did,” he told 12 News.
“I really don’t feel like the police were malicious toward the creature, they just were ill-equipped and unprepared and untrained in how to deal with this situation.”
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office told the Daily Mail that the deputies “took in consideration that the emu had been loose before and had previously kicked a Deputy Service Aid in the leg.
“An attempt to contact the Dept. of Agriculture for assistance was unsuccessful. The deputies who responded used the resources available to them at the time and attempted getting the emu out of the neighborhood unharmed, but, unfortunately, they were unsuccessful,” it said — though it claims “the emu’s exact medical status prior to the incident is unclear.
“While it is unfortunate that the emu died, MCSO has closed this matter and continues to work toward keeping county neighborhoods safe daily.”