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Handler – Officer Aaron Wagner
Freeport K-9 dies; cause unknown
Zirko, a K-9 officer for the Freeport Police Department, died in his outdoor kennel this week while off duty. The Dutch shepherd was discovered when his handler returned home from a shift, Freeport police announced Wednesday. The K-9 joined the department in late 2020 when he was 15 months old. “Zirko was off duty, I guess you could say, at the time. It was an off day for him and his handler,” Police Chief Jennifer Howell said. Zirko had been on “light duty,” she said, because of a diagnosis that had been made last year.“At the end of last year, he was diagnosed with heartworms, even though he was on heartworm prevention treatment,” Howell said. “So he did go through heartworm treatment and so, of course, we did have questions as to whether it had anything related to the heartworms or was it something else.” A necropsy was performed on Zirko, however, the specific cause of death has not been released due to ongoing investigations — one checking for any criminal activity under the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office and one by Freeport, as an internal matter for administrative purposes, Howell said.“We wanted answers pertaining to that, so that’s why we sent him off for a necropsy,” she said.In their post, the department said that a memorial for the K-9 would be planned for the near future. “He was an outstanding officer who served the citizens of Freeport for over three years,” it said.Zirko came to be part of the department as a patrol and narcotics dog after his predecessor, Gass, passed from an intestinal torsion. Zirko hailed from Poland, where Pacesetter K9 of Liberty Hill had brought him the United States. Freeport selected him in November 2020, at which time he came to the city and went through four weeks of training with his initial handler, Officer Aaron Wagner.In June 2021, Zirko was outfitted with a bulletproof vest through the efforts of then 8-year-old Las Vegas resident Theresa Ann Babcock on behalf of the organization Running4Heroes K-9, which chose him as their first benefactor because of Freeport’s association with Abigail Arias, the girl who died of cancer at the age of seven, but not until after she’d been made an honorary officer with the department.
