ANDERSON, Ind. — Watching the beginning of the video from a Ring doorbell, you'd think it was just your friendly local postman dropping off your mail. But according to Kerrigan Cronk, he stuck more than a few letters through the slot in her front door.
"My blood was boiling. I was furious. I just didn't know what to think. I was upset, furious. Everything in between," Cronk explained.
In the video, you can see the postal worker deliver the mail to her home in Anderson, then reach back into his bag — searching around for something.
That's when Cronk said he pulled a bottle of pepper spray out and began spraying it at her 1-year-old Dalmatian, Palmer, through her mail slot.
"I don't understand it because he stuck our mail in the slot and then went out of his way to spray our dog. He could have just stuck the mail in the slot and then walked away, but he chose to stay and continued to spray our dog," Cronk said.
Cronk said after she realized what happened, she filed a claim with the USPS and called police.
Her husband went down to the post office on Raible Avenue to talk to the postmaster.
"The postmaster kept telling my husband the pepper spray is a very mild pepper spray. That's all that he kept saying, which to me doesn't matter. He deliberately sprayed my dog three times and our house with my 2-month-old," Cronk said.
USPS sent 13News a statement, writing:
"The Postal Service extends sincere apology to the customer whose dog was sprayed by the carrier in this incident. The action displayed by the employee in the online video does not reflect the efforts of the thousands of professional, dedicated carriers in our workforce.
We are unable to comment further on a specific individual personnel matter."
"It could've been much worse. Like I said, if it could've traced onto my baby, I don't know what could have happened. We would have had an emergency room visit," Cronk said.
The postal worker also took Cronk's DoorDash order off of her porch. She said the postmaster claimed that was accidental, as a canned food drive was going on at that time.
Cronk hopes as a result of this pepper spray incident, better training will be introduced by the USPS.