San Jose K-9 rips off man's earlobe, exclusive video shows

SAN JOSE, Calif. - WARNING: This story has graphic images.

A San Jose police dog ripped into a man's face, biting off his earlobe as officers sent in the K-9 to investigate a laundry room fight involving a kitchen knife, exclusive body camera video obtained by KTVU shows.

Fernando Villanueva-Galvez still hasn't fully recovered from the police dog attack on Oct. 21, 2023, according to his Oakland attorney, Angel Alexander, whose law firm got the video from the Santa Clara County Public Defender's Office.

She sued San Jose police on her client's behalf last month.

The video shows officers sending in the dog, named Ronin, to search Villanueva-Galvez's apartment on Northrup Street where the then 19-year-old is heard screaming in pain from the back room. Ronin's handler, Officer Eliseo Anaya, calls off the dog five times, but the animal doesn't heed the orders, the video shows.

Eventually, the officers move in closer to where Villanueva-Galvaz is in the hallway of his apartment. His face was streaming with blood. A chunk of his ear had been bitten off. 

"His injuries were so horrific," Alexander told KTVU. "Police dogs are not supposed to behave that way. They're not supposed to attack your face." 

WARNING GRAPHIC VIDEO: SJPD K-9 rips man's face, bites off earlobe 

The other side:

The San Jose police declined to comment on the lawsuit. 

The city attorney's office did not immediately respond for comment. 

However, in police reports obtained by KTVU, Anaya wrote that he sent the dog in because Villanueva-Galvez had just stabbed someone and wouldn't comply with orders to come out of his apartment. 

In court documents in prior K-9 cases against the SJPD, city attorneys have argued that the officers' actions were reasonable.  

Anaya is the same officer who was cleared by the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office in 2019 for the deadly shooting of 24-year-old Jennifer Vasquez, whom they mistakenly identified as an armed felon and chased until she crashed her car into a chain link fence. 

K-9 dog bite investigation

Big picture view:

A two-month KTVU investigation analyzing K-9 bite data among the Bay Area’s 25 largest police departments revealed major discrepancies between agencies. 

Some departments routinely deploy police dogs to bite suspects, while other similar-sized departments virtually never use them.

The investigation found San Jose police led the pack with 167 bites over a five-year period from 2015 to 2020.

Richmond police had the second most bites – 84 in the same time period.

And in Antioch, a smaller city with fewer than 100 officers, police dogs bit people 49 times in just three years. 

By contrast, in the San Francisco and Oakland police departments – both of which have been under years of police reforms that include restrictive use-of-force policies – K-9s bite people less often.

San Francisco recorded just two bites over those same five years, while Oakland documented 13 bites. 

The laundry room fight

The backstory:

What exactly happened at the Unity Care apartments on the night  in question is a little murky between what Villanueva-Galvez said happened according to an 18-page federal lawsuit filed in December 2024 in U.S. District Court and what San Jose police said happened. 

Both sides did agree that the argument broke out in the apartment laundry room.

But Villanueva-Galvez said he was often harassed by his neighbor, Bailey, and her boyfriend, Devany, who he said took out his clothes and threw them on the floor. KTVU is not identifying them by last name because there are no criminal charges pending against them. 

But in police reports, Devany and Bailey told police the opposite: that they believed Villanueva-Galvez had taken their clothes out of the machine, and in the past, had threatened to kill Devany, with whom he had a longstanding beef. 

Because of this laundry room argument, Villanueva-Galvez said he went back up to his apartment and returned to the laundry room to be "verbally attacked" by his neighbor and boyfriend, his lawsuit states.

He got scared, and he ran back up to his apartment, grabbing a kitchen knife for protection, according to his lawsuit.

He went back down to the laundry room and saw Bailey and Devany waiting for him, the lawsuit states, without identifying them by name. 

Villanueva-Galvez said Bailey then slapped him "unprovoked" and her boyfriend punched and shoved him, the lawsuit states. The police report corroborates the slap, but also indicates that Villanueva-Galvez tried to hit both Bailey and Devaney. 

Villanueva-Galvez said he "feared for his safety" and took out his knife, trying to chase Devany away. 

And while he was running after the boyfriend, Bailey "inexplicably" ran into Villanueva-Galvez's knife and suffered what the lawyers described as a minor puncture wound, the lawsuit states.

The police report, however, indicates that Villanueva-Galvez pulled out a kitchen knife, tried to stab the boyfriend but ended up cutting Bailey on her left index finger and stomach. 

Police wrote in their report that they watched a witness's cell phone video of what happened, showing Villanueva-Galvez running toward Bailey making a "stabbing motion." 

Bailey received medical treatment on the scene, and she denied further medical care, according to both the police and the lawsuit. The police report indicates it was a minor injury. 

Villanueva-Galvez went back to his apartment, sure that the boyfriend would "respond with more violence," according to the lawsuit. 

The police report states that the San Jose K-9 unit was notified and responded to the scene. 

Villanueva-Galvaz did not want to be interviewed by KTVU about what happened. 

San Jose police respond

Timeline:

San Jose police were called to the scene and waited outside Villanueva-Galvez's apartment for nearly four hours, according to the lawsuit.

Meanwhile, the police report indicates that Villanueva-Galvez was given several hours to surrender and that he tried to block the windows with a sheet when police deployed some type of loud noise flash device. 

One police officer wrote that Villanueva-Galvez refused to come out. 

Another police officer wrote that he used a pole camera to spot Villanueva-Galvez lying under a sheet on his bed, and that he had temporarily placed a sofa in front of his bedroom door as a barricade. The officer noted that Villanueva-Galvez was holding some type of object that was six inches long in his hand. 

While waiting outside the apartment, Anaya did a background check on Villanueva-Galvez and learned he had no prior criminal history, the police report states. 

In his report, Anaya said that several commands were given to Vallenueva-Galvaz in both English and Spanish using his name but he "made no attempt to follow the directions of officers and surrender." 

But police only made "vague" announcements over a loudspeaker but never used Villanueva-Galvez's name, according to his attorneys, who added that he was asleep for most of those four hours. 

Police wrote in their report that "the suspect refused to exit his room and the canine was deployed." In addition, another officer deployed tear gas powder into his bedroom. 

The video shows police breaching Villanueva-Galvez's door with a battering ram and Anaya sending Ronin into the apartment off leash. 

What police said:

Anaya wrote in his report that he had "reasonable belief" that Villanueva-Galvez posed an "immediate threat of violence or serious physical injury" and that he would continue to hide and potentially flee from police. 

"The use of the police canine," Anaya wrote, "would overcome such resistance, prevent injury to arresting officers and ensure the apprehension of the suspect." 

Anaya is seen trying to recall Ronin five times, the video shows, but the dog doesn't return to his handler. 

Alexander stressed that this "critical fact [was] conspicuously omitted" from Anaya's police report.

"He did not mention that he couldn't recall his dog," she said. "And so now there is a belief that this dog behaves upon command. 

90-second bite 

Dig deeper:

The graphic video shows Villanueva-Galvez screaming and bleeding on the floor, when the officers rush over to him on the ground. 

According to the lawsuit, Ronin bit Villanueva-Galvez for more than 90 seconds, chewing his face, arms and neck while also biting off half his ear. 

Images and body camera video from the Valley Medical Center in San Jose confirm these injuries. 

When the officer decided to remove Ronin from the situation, the video shows that the K-9 refused to let go and continued to attack. 

One police officer simply wrote that Villanueva-Galvez was taken into custody "shortly thereafter." 

Anaya did write that when he saw Ronin biting Villanueva-Galvez's left arm, he "immediately grabbed" Ronin's harness and "removed him from the bite." 

Other San Jose K-9 cases

More cases :

San Jose police are facing at least four other federal K-9 lawsuits at this time.

One was filed by Anthony Paredes, who suffered permanent throat damage when a K-9 named Tex latched onto his throat for more than a minute in 2020. 

A federal judge ruled last month that Paredes' excessive force lawsuit could proceed against the city of San Jose, and that Tex had failed to respond to 22 verbal commands by his police handler, Officer Michael Jeffrey, in the past, despite the officer swearing in a court declaration that the dog had never failed to "release a bite in the field." 

David Tovar Jr., another man who was ultimately killed by San Jose police after being bitten by a K-9 on Jan. 21, 2021, also sued the department. 

In that case, a different federal judge ruled that a jury can consider that the dog who bit Tovar for 2 minutes and 40 seconds can consider that an excessive use of force. 

Two other excessive K-9 cases were filed against SJPD by Ty Mullins and Zacahry Rosenbaum, who said that the police dog continued to bite him after he surrendered His case was argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in February 2024. 

San Jose, meanwhile, has argued in court filings that the use of the K-9s in all the cases was lawful and reasonable. 

Lingering health damage 

What's next:

Villanueva-Galvez and his family had come to the United States from Mexico for a better life, but now, at age 20, has lingering damage from the attack. 

He works as a farmworker in Watsonville, his attorney said, but has physical difficulty because of lingering nerve damage, vision and hearing loss and depression. 

In addition, his criminal case is working its way through the legal system and has already been downgraded from what prosecutors' charged.

Alexander said that Villanueva-Galvez's original felony assault charge is now a misdemeanor. 

And if he pays $3,000 in restitution fees and completes 20 hours of community service, it's possible that the DA will dismiss all the charges and a judge will seal his record, Alexander said. 

Alexander said she hopes that this case, and the others, will persuade the San Jose Police Department to rethink its K-9 policy. 

Using the dogs for sniffing and searching are fine, she said, but biting people until they become seriously injured is not OK, she said. 

"They have these out-of-control K-9s," Alexander said. "And they have a department that violates their use. There is a really big disconnect between their training and their implementation." 

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