Teacher says TSA-trained dog attacked her at Nashville International Airport
By Jeremy Finley
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NASHVILLE, Tennessee (WSMV) — It was finally happening for Kelly Jones; a long-delayed trip to Europe, in which she and other adults would be taking students from her Benton, Kentucky school.
On March 28, 2022, Jones, her sister and a friend were walking past BNA K-9 officer William Green and his dog, Kim, in a main corridor.
In Green’s body camera footage, obtained by WSMV4 Investigates, the dog lunges so quickly at Jones that the bite can barely be seen. In the video, Jones flinches and grabs her arm.
“I went into complete shock mode. Got pale. Weak. Nauseated,” Jones said.
Body camera footage by another airport officer shows one of the women with Jones saying, “Is there something you can put on there to keep it from bleeding?”
At first, Jones wasn’t sure how bad the bite was, until she realized that her skin can be torn off in places.
“It was like a burn, a real burning sensation,” Jones described.
As she was being treated by airport police, Jones kept wondering: why had the dog attacked? All she had done, after all, was walk by.
“You did nothing to irritate the dog?” asked WSMV4 Investigates.
“No. I barely even glanced at the dog,” Jones said.
When Jones later sued the Metro Nashville Airport Authority for $200,000, she learned what the airport suggested happened.
An airport attorney responded in a court filing, “Jones may have disturbed the security dog by passing too close to a working security dog without permission.”
“I did nothing but walk by. So I’m afraid everybody would be in danger, even be near, one of those types of dogs,” Jones said.
But the body camera footage of the second police officer shows Green himself saying it was not Jones’ fault.
“What, she tries to get close or something?” the second airport police officer asks. “Nah, she just walked by and he just reached over and got her arm,” Green said.
Neither the TSA nor MNAA would comment because of the lawsuit.
Information about the dog itself can only be gleamed from court records, that show the bite occurred on the dog’s first day at the airport after being trained by the TSA.
Court records also show that a claim examiner for MNAA’s insurance denied liability for the bite, citing that BNA, “has no ownership or control of TSA K’s on the airport premises.” The body camera footage, however, shows Green holding the dog’s leash. Jones says her physical scars may have healed, but her emotional ones remain.
“Every time I go to the airport, I’m on watch. Looking. Do they have a dog?” Jones said. “It makes me apprehensive around other dogs.”
WSMV4 Investigates was denied by both the TSA and BNA in our requests for any K-9 training manual or incidents of potential other attacks, so we have filed Freedom of Information ACT requests to try and obtain that information.
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