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A one-year-old miniature donkey named HeeHaw — bottle-fed, raised in the house, famous on the internet for believing every human was his friend — was shot by a Cedartown, Georgia police officer during the overnight search for a missing girl. The officer says the donkey charged him and a K-9 handler. The family says their donkey ran toward people, never away from them. The state is now investigating, and the department’s own chief calls it a tragedy.
What happened
The Israel family’s ranch sits off Grady Road in Cedartown, in Polk County. When a girl went missing on the night of August 22, police flooded the area — and the search crossed the family’s fenced property, where HeeHaw lived alongside goats, horses, and the family’s other animals.
According to officer Trenton Garner’s own written report, the donkey charged at him and a K-9 handler inside the pasture. Garner wrote that he drew his Glock 17 and fired, and that the animal’s advance “in fact did not deter” after the first rounds. HeeHaw went down near the fence line. The girl was found safe hours later, near a church down the same road.
The family learned what happened when the mother’s phone rang at about 12:45 that night. She says she initially thought the call was about permission to search — not that her donkey was already gone.
The department’s answer
Cedartown Chief Jamie Newsome did not hide from it. He placed Garner on administrative leave the same night and went on camera calling the loss of HeeHaw a tragedy. The case was handed to the Georgia Department of Agriculture’s law enforcement division — the agency that handles livestock cases — and Commissioner Tyler Harper has publicly promised a thorough and impartial review.
No charges have been filed. Garner remains on leave while the state review runs. Whether the shooting gets referred for an animal-cruelty charge is exactly what the review is supposed to decide, and the Polk County DA will ultimately make that call.
The family’s first move
The family’s lawyer fired off a cease-and-desist — but not at the police. It targets online attackers of the Israel family, people the lawyer says spent days flooding them with what he calls relentless and defamatory messages while they were grieving. Meanwhile a fundraiser for the family has drawn attention from millions who met HeeHaw through viral clips of him trailing his goat best friend around the pasture.
The family’s sharpest public question is a practical one: the property had two locked gates. If officers got in, how — and who unlocked them?
What happens next
The Agriculture division’s review is the clock everything runs on. OhDangReally is watching for three things: whether the state refers charges, whether Garner’s leave ends in termination or return, and whether the department releases the officer-worn camera conduct records from the search. We’ll update this story as each lands.
As always: the officer has not been charged with a crime, and this story will follow the evidence wherever the state review takes it.
RAW
Update: The Family Has Sued — In Federal Court
On September 11, Hannah Israel filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against the officer, Trenton Ryan Garner, in the Northern District of Georgia, Rome Division — case number 4:26-cv-00270. The complaint, filed by attorney Mark Yurachek, names Garner in his individual capacity and brings four counts under federal civil-rights law: unlawful entry, unlawful search, unlawful seizure, and destruction of property. The family has demanded a jury trial.
Notably, the complaint itself asks for no specific dollar amount — compensatory and punitive damages are “to be determined at trial.” A widely reported $1 million figure came from a separate pre-suit demand letter the family’s lawyer sent to the city of Cedartown before filing; the city is not a defendant in the suit as filed.
The complaint also locks in the detail that has become the case’s central question: according to the filing, there were two locked gates between the public road and the pasture. Officers had no warrant. If the gate was locked, the filing asks, how did the search party reach the donkey — and who unlocked it?
Garner remains on administrative leave, no criminal charges have been filed, and the Georgia Department of Agriculture’s law enforcement division is conducting the outside review. This post will be updated as each piece lands.
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