A 33-year-old Gainesville man was arrested Sunday and charged with allegedly hitting a police dog, leaving a cut on its snout, after fleeing from officers during a traffic stop.
The suspect, James Cantrall Grant, was pulled over in the 800 block of SE 19th Terrace at about 10:20 p.m., when he got out of the vehicle and ran, according to a Gainesville Police Department arrest report.
The police K9 Justice was brought to the scene to track the suspect, and Justice eventually apprehended Grant, according to the report.
Officer Robert White wrote that Grant “struck K9 Justice several times in the head area” and grabbed at his face, causing a “laceration to the left side of his snout which needed to be treated.”
It turned out that Grant’s driver’s license had been revoked in 1996, when he was convicted of a burglary of an occupied car.
There was also an active warrant for his arrest for violating probation on a failure to register as a sex offender charge.
Grant was charged with resisting an officer without violence and striking a police animal, both first-degree misdemeanors, and driving while license suspended for a habitual offender, a third-degree felony. He was also charged with probation violation and failure to appear in court.
He was being held at the Alachua County jail on Monday.
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