K-9 'drives' car, hits woman

The Associated Press

OGDEN, Utah — A police dog put a pickup truck into gear, injuring a woman on her way to the mailbox in an incident that has ended with a $300,000 settlement.

"She suffered some serious injuries in an accident that was not foreseeable," Ogden city attorney Gary Williams said Monday. "We think it was a fair resolution."

Mary Frances Stone, 43, was walking to her mailbox in July 2006 when she was hit by a 1990 Ford pickup truck assigned to Officer Taylor Finder.

Ranger, a German shepherd, was in the bed of the idling truck but jumped into the front seat through a sliding door and somehow knocked the automatic transmission into gear, police said.

Stone, who had a broken pelvis, had asked for $580,000 but settled with the city's insurer for $300,000.

"I would like to get more. ... If my car had hit a cop, I would be in jail," she said Monday.

Police Chief Jon Greiner was sympathetic.

"It's too bad she suffered injuries as a result of this," he said.

Finder and other officers were responding to a call in Stone's neighborhood when the truck hit her. He wasn't disciplined. He declined to comment on the settlement.