Police dog Titan recovering
The police dog Titan recovering from his stab wounds. Courtesy San Diego Police

A man was behind bars Wednesday on suspicion of stabbing a San Diego Police dog during an altercation in the Midway District.

At about 11:30 a.m. Monday, two officers responded to a radio call of a man trespassing at a business in the 3300 block of Barnett Avenue, southwest of Interstate 5, according to police.

The officers found the man, later identified as 35-year-old Dedrick Jones, but he refused to give them his information and kept reaching for his bag.

When officers tried to put him in handcuffs, Jones allegedly punched the officers and ran into a nearby military property, where he stood on a shipping container waving a knife for four hours, police said.

Emergency negotiators convinced him to come down from the shipping container, but Jones “refused to put the knife down,” the department said in a tweet. “The officer released his K9 partner, Titan, to assist and the suspect stabbed him.”

Officers then ran in and took Jones into custody.

Titan was rushed to an animal hospital for treatment of stab wounds to his side that caused a laceration to his colon in three places, police said. Titan had six to eight inches of his colon surgically removed and received over 100 stitches.

“We are grateful Titan is on the road to recovery,” the department said in a tweet. “He’s a brave boy!”

Jones was booked into San Diego Central Jail on suspicion of felony resisting arrest, resisting an executive officer and harming a police dog, according to jail records. He was being held in lieu of $50,000 bail pending his arraignment, scheduled for Feb. 19.