Who is Jacqueline Maguire, the FBI’s top agent in Philly facing scrutiny for fatally shooting a dog in Center City?

The shooting of a pit bull by an off-duty FBI agent on a busy Center City street this week has sparked an uproar on social media and protests by animal rights activists outside the FBI’s offices on Arch Street.

Here’s what we know about the incident, the agent involved, and what happens next:

Philadelphia police and the FBI have confirmed that an off-duty FBI agent shot “an aggressive dog” outside the Touraine apartment tower on the 1500 block of Spruce Street on Monday. But so far, they haven’t named the agent involved, citing FBI protocol that governs the bureau’s response whenever an agent is involved in a shooting.

Two sources familiar with the investigation identified the shooter as Jacqueline Maguire, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia field office. The dog’s owner, Maria Esser, said her 7-year-old pit bull, Mia, died within moments of being shot.

Maguire has led the bureau’s Philadelphia office since the fall of 2021 when she was appointed by FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Her career in law enforcement began after she graduated from Villanova University in 1996 with a degree in comprehensive science. In an interview with The Inquirer last year, she said she’d initially considered going to medical school.

But during an internship with the Suffolk County (N.Y.) Medical Examiner’s Office, she came into contact with FBI agents investigating the crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996.

“It piqued my interest that that might be the right next step,” she said.

She went to graduate school and joined the FBI as a special agent in 2000 as part of the Joint Terrorism Task Force in the bureau’s New York office, where she served as a lead case agent in the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

She later served stints in bureau offices in New York; Washington, D.C.; and Birmingham, Ala., before she was assigned to lead the Philadelphia office.

So far, Maguire has declined to comment and is not likely to do so while the matter remains under investigation.

“The FBI takes all shooting incidents involving our agents or task force members seriously,” a spokesperson for her office said in a statement Monday night. “We are working jointly with the Philadelphia Police Department and the FBI’s Inspection Division to investigate the incident.”

Local authorities have also remained tight-lipped. However, Philadelphia Police Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore said Tuesday that the pit bull had attacked Maguire’s dog shortly before the shooting.

“She had a smaller dog and a larger dog attacked that dog,” he said. “When [Maguire] tried to get her dog back, I think the dog attacked her and then she discharged her weapon.”

Security cameras outside the apartment building captured footage of the shooting. And while police have not publicly released the video, one source who reviewed the tape described it to The Inquirer on Tuesday.

According to the source, who was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the ongoing probe, the video shows Maguire sitting on a bench with her small dog in her lap as a woman walking two other dogs passed by. One of the dogs — Mia — suddenly dragged her owner toward Maguire, snatched the small dog off the agent’s lap, and began aggressively shaking it, the source said.

Maguire threw herself into the fight and tried to separate the animals, eventually drawing her weapon and placing it directly against the pit bull’s hindquarters before firing, the source said.

Esser said Mia, adopted from a pit bull rescue organization by her ex-boyfriend in 2007, died in her arms shortly after the shooting. She’s called Maguire’s use of force a “reckless” disregard for her safety, that of her dog and anyone else in the area.

She and animal rights activists who gathered to protest Tuesday outside of the FBI’s offices on Arch Street are calling for Maguire to be held accountable.

“Mia was leashed and shot at an incredibly close — less than 3-foot — distance,” Esser’s sister, Gabriella, told The Inquirer on Tuesday. “I can’t stop thinking about how my sister, Maria, could have been injured or worse.”

Philadelphia police have said once they’ve completed their probe, they will refer the matter to the District Attorney’s Office to determine whether any charges are warranted.

Meanwhile, the FBI is conducting an internal review into Maguire’s use of force, as happens whenever an agent discharges a weapon. Such probes, conducted by a shooting review team sent from FBI headquarters in Washington, typically take place quietly and the bureau does not usually identify the agents involved.

The agent must hand over the firearm used in the incident to investigators.

Department of Justice guidelines say agents are allowed to use force that is “objectively reasonable to effectively gain control of an incident while protecting the safety of themselves and others.”

Those rules say deadly force is justified in the face of “imminent danger of death or serious physical injury” to an agent or someone else.

Though the dog’s shooting remains under investigation, police have said Maguire described the pit bull attacking her dog and then her when she tried to break up the fight between the two animals.

The FBI’s internal review is likely to focus on both whether Maguire was justified in using lethal force against the dog and whether the shooting needlessly endangered Esser — the dog’s owner — or anyone else nearby.