Police in Charlotte, North Carolina are providing a little more information about the tragic death of Angie Harmon’s beloved dog Oliver last weekend, telling TMZ that Olivier did bite the Instacart delivery person who shot the pet dead.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department is standing by its decision to not press charges against the delivery person who killed Oliver, the German shepherd/beagle dog belonging to the “Law and Order” star. While police would not say how they determined the delivery person acted in self-defense, they insisted to TMZ that he was attacked and had bite marks on him from the dog.
This statement contradicts Harmon’s assertion that Oliver did not threaten the Instacart “shopper” who brought groceries to her home on Easter Sunday. Harmon said she saw no scratches or bite marks on the man. In an Instagram post on Monday, Harmon also expressed dismay that the man claimed “self-defense,” which meant that responding officers let him go.
Harmon and her attorney also painted a picture of a gunman who was remorseless and even “braggadocious” about killing her beloved pet. Harmon’s attorney, John Buric, told TMZ that Oliver and another of Harmon’s dogs were outside in the front yard when the delivery person arrived.
Harmon was upstairs, putting food in a squirrel feeder, while her children were in the backyard. That’s when they heard a gunshot, Buric said. When they rushed to their front yard to find Oliver lying in a pool of blood, Harmon said the man repeatedly said, “Yeah, I just shot your dog.”
The “Rizzoli & Isles” star revealed on Instagram that she and her daughters were left “traumatized and beyond devastated” by the shooting of their “beloved boy.” Harmon shared photos of a sweet-looking Oliver, being petted, napping, or as a puppy. She wrote, “He shot our dog with my daughters & myself at home & just kept saying, ‘yeah, I shot your dog. Yeah I did.’”
It may be no consolation for Harmon and her daughters, but she received an apology from San Francisco-based Instacart for the killing of her dog.
In a statement provided to the media, Instacart said that the driver involved in he shooting had been suspended.
“We were deeply saddened and disturbed to hear about this incident,” the statement read. “We have no tolerance for violence of any kind, and the shopper account was immediately suspended from our platform.”
With Instacart, people sign up to be “shoppers,” creating accounts on an app that allows them to see orders in their area and offer to go to local stores and fill the orders. Shoppers must be at least 18, legally eligible to work in the United States and have access to a reliable car and a phone that can run the Instacart app. They are paid a percentage of the order, depending on the order’s size, the driving distance and the effort involved in shopping and delivering the items.
Instacart said it has been in “direct contact” with Harmon and was cooperating with local law enforcement officials investigating the case.
While police have said they have closed the case, they provided one more nugget of information to TMZ that could raise further questions about the delivery person. He had been arrested in the past for an undisclosed violation, but he was never convicted of a felony so there was nothing preventing him from legally owning a firearm, TMZ reported.
Harmon also had pointed out that the delivery person had been using a woman’s Instacart shopper account. It also appeared that he knew he wasn’t being recorded when he shot the dog, with Harmon saying that her Ring security camera was charging inside at the time of the incident.
Harmon subsequently wrote a message directly to the delivery person in her Instagram stories.
“To the man who took Ollie away from us: your actions are despicable and inexcusable,” Harmon wrote. “You’ve not only robbed us of a beloved member of our family but you’ve also traumatized us beyond measure.”