Dashboard · Satire, mostly
Burro-cratic Oversight
The National Officer-Involved Donkey Shooting Database
Comprehensive. Authoritative. Current. Every known case in which a law enforcement officer in the United States has used a firearm against a donkey, mule, or burro.
| Incidents on record | 1 |
| Fatality rate | 100% |
| Less-lethal attempted first (where applicable) | 100% of 1 |
| Officer placed on leave (where reported) | 100% of 1 |
| Agency named in the record | 1 of 1 |
| Mean animal age (years) | 1.00 |
| Median animal age (years) | 1.00 |
| Standard deviation of age | undefined (n = 1) |
| Animals named HeeHaw | 1 of 1 |
| Animals with no recorded name | 0 of 1 |
Incident Database
Showing 1 to 1 of 1 records, newest first. Filters, sorting, and pagination have been implemented and are awaiting a second row.
| Case ID | DSD-2026-001 |
|---|---|
| Date | August 30, 2026 |
| Animal | HeeHaw, donkey, miniature, age 1 year |
| Location | Cedartown, Polk County, Georgia |
| Agency | Cedartown Police Department |
| Context | Officers entered a pasture on Grady Road (Elseberry Riding and Farm) at about 12:45 a.m. while searching for a missing 12-year-old girl, who was found safe. |
| Sequence | Per the family, HeeHaw ran toward officers braying. Officers attempted a Taser, then shot him. |
| Less-lethal attempted | Yes (Taser attempted) |
| Outcome | Killed |
| Body-worn camera | Yes (chief reviewed footage) |
| Officer status | Administrative leave pending internal investigation |
| Investigation | Referred to the Georgia Department of Agriculture, Law Enforcement Division |
| Sources | WRGA (Rome, GA) · WSB-TV Atlanta · 11Alive · FOX 5 Atlanta |
Excluded Cases
A full review of the record turned up more civilians, vans, congressmen, cattle, and veterinary euthanasias than officers using force. Each near-miss is logged with the criterion it failed, because a database that only reports what it counted is hiding the interesting part.
| Date | Place | Animal | What happened | Why excluded | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 29, 2025 | Bullhead City, Mohave County, Arizona | Wild burro | A car struck a wild burro near milepost 1 on Highway 68 at about 11:25 a.m. Bullhead City police contacted the Bureau of Land Management, which advised euthanizing the severely injured animal. | Euthanasia of a fatally injured animal, not a use of force. The accessible report also never says who performed it. | Mohave Daily News |
| April 12, 2022 | Santa Rosa County, Florida | Donkey | Deputies responded to a loose donkey near a bridge, tried several times to corral it, and called an independent livestock contractor. The contractor hand-fed the donkey, declined a halter offered by a witness, retrieved a firearm, and shot it twice. He was charged with felony animal cruelty and inhumane slaughter of livestock. | Civilian shooter. Deputies were present, which is close, but the database counts triggers, not attendance. | WEAR-TV · WKRG · WLBT |
| September 15, 2019 | Byron, Contra Costa County, California | Mule, 5 to 6 years old | A mule carrying a rider was struck by an Audi sedan on Delta Road at Byron Highway at about 7:05 p.m. Animal control described two fractured legs, a broken pelvis, and heavy bleeding by phone to a Brentwood veterinarian, who advised shooting the animal. "An officer at the scene" did. | Euthanasia on veterinary advice, not a use of force. Also single-sourced, and the report never names the agency. | The Mercury News, Sept. 18, 2019 (via PressReader) |
| November 15, 2018 | Bullhead City, Mohave County, Arizona | Wild burro | A Bullhead City Police transport van returning from the county jail at about 2:30 a.m. struck and killed a burro on Highway 68. The officer was uninjured. It was the sixth burro-vehicle collision in the area that month. | Vehicle, not firearm. Filed with regret; it was a police van. | The Bee (Bullhead City) |
| August 1975 | Yavapai County, Arizona | Two burros | U.S. Rep. Sam Steiger shot two burros on a highway near Prescott and said they had charged him. The Yavapai County Sheriff's Office investigated and declined to file charges. The burros followed him through his 1976 Senate campaign. | Shooter was a sitting congressman. Armed, but not sworn. | Axios Phoenix |
| May 2019 | Clark Mountain Herd Area, I-15 corridor, California and Nevada | 42 wild burros | The Bureau of Land Management found 42 burro carcasses with gunshot wounds along Interstate 15 between Halloran Springs and Primm. The San Bernardino County Sheriff, CHP, and state wildlife officers assisted the investigation. | Shooter never identified. Would be the largest entry in the database by a factor of 42. | Pahrump Valley Times |
| December 31, 2017 | Oatman, Mohave County, Arizona | Young wild burro | Motorists found a young burro with a gunshot wound on New Year's Eve. Its injuries were severe enough that the Bureau of Land Management euthanized it. | Shooter never identified. | Today's News-Herald (Lake Havasu) |
| May 9, 2026 | Jeff Davis County, Georgia | Two bulls | Deputies responding to loose cattle were charged by three bulls. One deputy, cornered on a porch, shot two of them as they approached. Both died. | Wrong species (bovine). Noted because the pattern is the point: officers shoot livestock with some regularity and nobody counts it. | WSAV |
Methodology
- Inclusion criteria
- A sworn law enforcement officer in the United States discharged a firearm at a donkey, mule, or burro as a use of force. Shooting an animal already fatally injured, on veterinary advice, is a mercy rather than a use of force and is logged under excluded cases. Burros are donkeys with a Southwestern accent; mules are half donkey and count in full. Zebras remain out of scope pending a third database.
- Data sources
- Published news reporting. Cases are cross-checked against two outlets where two exist; single-source cases are marked provisional. No federal, state, or local agency maintains a count of police shootings of animals, which is why a database of donkeys has to be assembled by hand from television stations in Rome, Georgia.
- Search protocol
- Systematic queries on "donkey," "mule," "burro," and every combination with "shot," "deputies," "trooper," "euthanized," and "put down," across all years. The protocol returned the same Georgia story roughly forty times, one euthanized mule, one paywalled burro, and a great many dogs.
- Coding
- Two coders independently classified the species. Inter-rater reliability was perfect (κ = 1.00). Both agreed it was a donkey.
- Limitations
- The sample size is 1. Inferential statistics are inadvisable. Trend estimates are unstable. Any generalization from these data to donkeys, officers, or the states involved is the reader's responsibility.
- Preregistration
- No. The incidents happened first.
Why this exists
The United States does not systematically count how often police shoot animals. There is no federal reporting requirement, no standard definition, and no agency whose job it is to know. Researchers who want the number build it themselves from news clippings, public records requests, and lawsuits.
That is far more of a problem for dogs, which officers encounter constantly and shoot with some regularity, than for donkeys. Asked about the Polk County incident, Sheriff Johnny Moats noted that officers "encounter animals a lot. Vicious animals like dogs." For dogs, see Justin Nix's dog shooting tracker, which is doing the real work.
This page tracks the donkeys. It exists to make a point about the gap, and because a national dashboard with 1 rows and a longer table of things that almost counted is funnier than a paragraph explaining that the country cannot count.
In memoriam
HeeHaw (2025–2026), a bottle-fed miniature donkey who visited petting zoos and nursing homes and, by his family's account, never met a stranger. The joke on this page is about data collection. It is not about him.
Download the data
The full database is available in open formats for replication, secondary analysis, and teaching examples about small samples. The JSON includes the under-review and excluded cases; the CSV is the confirmed records only, all 1 of them.
Submissions require a published news report, a sworn officer, and a donkey, mule, or burro. Data current as of 2026-09-02. Incidents tracked: 1. Cases that almost counted: 8. Dashboards built to track them: 1.