A Georgia man plans to take legal action against police after he was attacked by a K-9 when his wife called 911 for a mental health crisis.
Officers with the Alpharetta Police Department arrived at Travis Moya’s home last July after his wife, Kami Moya, and stepson reported that he was pacing back and forth in the house and grunting and punching his car. Kami said she was worried about his mental state, but dispatchers flagged the report as a domestic violence call.
Police body-worn camera footage shows a restrained Travis surrounded by three officers as he falls to the ground. A third officer was holding a police dog that tore into the man’s skin, leaving him with 40 bite wounds all over his body. He also suffered a concussion.
“It was terrifying to record my husband being attacked and trying to record and care at the same time,” said Kami Moya, who could be heard on the footage screaming and crying. “It was the most traumatic experience ever. There were pieces of his arm; he’s missing pieces of his arm.”
Police said the officer released the dog on Travis Moya because he was aggressive. They said Moya started to take his jacket off and walked down the driveway in the direction of the K-9 officer with his fists balled.
The K-9 officer wrote in the use-of-force report that he told Moya he had “a K9 partner in my vehicle and if he walked up on me, I would release the K9, and he would be bit.”
The body-worn camera shows Moya walking toward the front of his house with a jacket partially off when an officer pulls up.
“Hey, calm down, man. It’s OK. We’re just here to help,” the officer said.
“I don’t know if he took anything, but he’s not his usual self. He’s breathing hard…” Kami Moya said before she was interrupted by Travis, who yelled down the driveway. The officer then warned the man about the K-9.
The officers also said that dog latched onto Moya because he “continued not to put his hands behind his back.”
Moya was charged with felony obstruction for not complying with officer commands. He was taken to the hospital before he was booked in the Fulton County Jail. However, local prosecutors dropped the charges on June 29.
“The whole experience has been traumatic. It’s affected myself, my family, a whole realm of things,” Travis Moya said.
Now Moya and his attorney want the officers to pay for the damage it has caused. His attorney said he lost 100 percent of his mobility and job opportunities because of the incident.
“All too often, an individual’s character is assassinated, and months or years later, charges are dropped or dismissed. But the damage to Mr. Moya has already been done,” Moya’s attorney said.
Attorney L. Chris Stewart said the charges were filed against Moya just “to hide the bad behavior of the officer involved in this situation.
“We all saw from the video that Mr. Moya didn’t do a single thing in order to be charged and that he was the victim of excessive force,” Stewart said at the press conference. “In these situations of excessive force, the easiest way to hide that is by creating these unnecessary and false charges against somebody. That’s the easiest way to hide bad behavior.”
