The pit bull fatally shot by Philly’s top FBI agent severely injured another dog earlier this year, neighbors say

Less than a month before Jacqueline Maguire, the FBI’s top agent in Philadelphia, shot and killed a pit bull as it reportedly attacked her smaller dog on a Center City street this week, that pit bull seriously injured another dog, requiring three surgeries and $9,000 in vet bills, according to residents of the building where the earlier incident took place.

The Jan. 27 fracas — between the 7-year-old pit bull named Mia and a Siberian husky mix puppy that lived in the same apartment complex — prompted management to ban the pit bull from a community dog park and require it to be muzzled in all common areas, three neighbors at the Lincoln Square apartments at Broad Street and Washington Avenue said.

Those residents — most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid conflict with neighbors — said they were prompted to share the story with The Inquirer after seeing news of the pit bull’s fatal shooting Monday and in response to a TV interview in which the dog’s owner, Maria Esser, said she’d never had an incident with the dog before.

“It’s been a little frustrating,” said one resident who witnessed the earlier dog fight. “Many of us in the building know that this dog [Mia] was not completely innocent.”

The injured puppy’s owner said she was stunned to learn that the dog Maguire shot Monday was the same one that bit her puppy’s leg through to the bone just weeks earlier.

“I looked at the photos and recognized the dog immediately,” she said. “It’s a mixed bag of emotions.”

Esser, 27, has not responded to requests to discuss that earlier incident despite several attempts to reach her directly and through family members over the past two days.

And managers at the building said Friday they would only release information to the police.

But the residents’ accounts shed new light on the circumstances surrounding the pit bull’s highly publicized death — an incident that has divided dog owners across the city, spawned uproar on social media, and prompted debates over Maguire’s use of force.

Many of the details surrounding what led to the pit bull’s fatal shooting Monday remain hazy.

Maguire has not responded to repeated requests for comment. Philadelphia police and the FBI continue to investigate.

Officially, they’ve said only that an off-duty FBI agent fatally shot an “aggressive dog” outside the Touraine apartment building after it appeared to attack the agent’s dog.

But sources close to the investigation have identified the shooter as Jacqueline Maguire — who was appointed special agent in charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia field office in 2021 — and described footage of the incident caught by nearby security cameras.

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

According to one source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing probe, the video showed Maguire sitting on a bench with her small dog in her lap, when the pit bull rushed forward, dragging along Esser, and snatched the agent’s dog off her lap and began aggressively shaking it.

Maguire threw herself into the fray attempting to separate the animals, the source said, before she eventually drew her weapon, placed it directly against the pit bull’s hide and fired.

So far, police have refused to release that footage publicly.

But in a statement to The Inquirer and an interview with CBS3 earlier this week, Esser and her family have disputed that account. They described Mia as a “loyal and loving dog” and Maguire’s use of force as “reckless” and “a blatant disregard for the safety of anyone around during the incident.”

“Our dogs got into an altercation,” Esser told the news station Tuesday. “Her dog started barking at my dog, and Mia had gotten ahold of [Maguire’s] dog’s harness. … By the time I went down to get her off, this woman shot my dog.”

Esser’s neighbors at the Lincoln Square building said they watched her interview this week in disbelief, prompting some to reach out to The Inquirer to report the earlier dog fight.

“Wait a minute, three weeks ago that dog put another dog in a cast,” said Lisa DePaulo, a journalist who lives in the building. “If something like that happens you put a muzzle on your dog before you take it out.”

The Siberian husky’s owner, a 29-year-old who asked not to named to avoid conflict with neighbors, was more circumspect.

She said she’d just come back from taking her puppy to the dog park when she encountered Mia in the building’s hallway being walked by one of Esser’s friends.

Her pup, she said, sniffed at the pit bull who responded aggressively and within seconds, the two dogs were snarling, biting, and locking onto each other.

“It honestly sounded like a child was being hurt,” said one neighbor who heard the fight from inside her apartment, stepped outside to see what was going on, and later drove the husky puppy and its owner to the veterinary hospital. “You could see the bone in the [Siberian husky’s] leg. There was blood everywhere. She’s had multiple surgeries since.”

Despite the extent of that dog’s injuries neither its owner nor the woman who stopped to help put the blame entirely on Mia.

“Both dogs were injured,” the neighbor said. “It wasn’t a one-sided thing.”

The puppy’s owner acknowledged the pit bull might have mistaken her smaller dog’s curiosity for aggression. She did not file a police report at the time but said she now intends to do so.

“Dogs are reactive,” she said. “These things happen unfortunately.”

Still, both women said they appreciated the efforts by the apartment building’s management to put the pit bull under tighter control. They wonder whether the incident that led to its fatal shooting Monday might have been avoided.

But for DePaulo, the journalist who lives in the building, that incident was a final straw. A dog owner herself, she plans to press Lincoln Square’s management to impose breed restrictions in the building and said she sympathizes with Maguire.

“I don’t have a gun,” she said. “But if I did and that was happening to my dog ... I’d pull it in a heartbeat.”