No one comes between a man and his dog. If you've ever watched the John Wick franchise, you know a dog's death led to countless deaths (probably half the population of New York) and the collapse of an assassin organization. Well, this Lone Survivor former Navy SEAL channeled John Wick after someone killed his dog.
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You may know Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell even if you don't recognize him. Mark Wahlberg famously played him in the film Lone Survivor. That film ended up with a sad epilogue. Five years after Luttrell survived overwhelming odds, someone killed the Navy Seal's dog. Luttrell adopted the Yellow Labrador puppy as part of his recovery. He named the pooch Dasy as an acronym for the names of his fellow Navy SEALs who didn't survive.
He was in his home in Texas when he heard a gunshot nearby. Luttrell grabbed his 9mm pistol and decided to investigate. That's when he found his dog dead. "I saw my dog in a ditch and two men standing outside the car. I could hear them laughing... When I saw she was dead, the only thing that popped into my head was, 'I've got to take these guys out,'" Luttrell told NBC News.
Navy SEAL Pursues Men Who Killed His Dog
The two men left in the car, and the former Navy SEAL decided to follow them. He called emergency services, warning like John Wick, that he would kill the men if he caught them. "I told them, 'You need to get somebody out here because if I catch them, I'm going to kill them,'" Luttrell told the operator, according to the Houston Chronicle.
One 40-mile high-speed chase later, Luttrell's pickup truck eventually lost the vehicle. It just couldn't keep up. Who knows what would have happened if he caught them? But the commotion led to the Texas Rangers stopping the vehicle. They ended up arresting the two for cruelty to a non-livestock animal and the driver for not having a license.
The former Navy SEAL made it to the scene to confront the suspects. Authorities convicted Alfonso Hernandez and Michael Edmonds for the shooting of Dasy in 2012. Edmonds got a five years probation while Hernandez got wo years confinement and a fine. Luttrell said the dog's death set back his recovery. He later got another dog named Rigby, which he owned until it died in 2021.
"Marcus is trained to do certain things; he fell back on his training," a Texas Ranger told NBC News. "I wouldn't advocate to the general public to do what he has done — to follow them at that rate of speed."
