By Dana Rieck
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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FLORISSANT, Mo. — Police have found the police dog who escaped his kennel during Wednesday’s storm.
A Florissant officer found Raider, a 3-year-old Dutch shepherd, just before 9 a.m. Saturday in a backyard on Sullivan Oaks Place in a Florissant subdivision.
“He’s got some scrapes and things like that,” Officer Justin Cull , his handler, told the Post-Dispatch. “It looks like he might have lost a little bit of weight. Other than that, he’s just tired. So he ate a bowl of food, and he’s laying in his crate in the house right now. I’m getting ready to give him a bath and get him to the vet.”
Pagedale police Officer Justin Cull is reunited with Raider, a drug-sniffing police dog. Raider escaped his kennel and was on the loose for two days before he was found in a Florissant backyard.
Raider was believed to have gotten away late Wednesday night from his kennel outside Cull’s home in Florissant .
Cull said during the storm a tree fell on his fence, which is parallel to Raider’s kennel.
“I can tell you that he serves search warrants with me,” Cull said. “I’m on a SWAT team, and he goes on almost every search warrant, and we throw flash bangs and things like that, and it doesn’t affect him. So I don’t know if the tree spooked him, if it was a lightning crash, I don’t know exactly what it was.”
Cull said his family was “elated” to have found Raider safe.
The officer said several police departments helped search for Raider, including Florissant , Berkeley , St Louis city, St Louis County , Normandy, North County Police Cooperative and Hazelwood .
Cull noted his neighbors, and even his mail carrier, also pitched in.
“The community was a great help in locating him,” he said.
Raider has been a member of the department almost two years. His specialty is finding illegal drugs.
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