PALESTINE, Ark. — A small-town cop walked into a woman’s living room for a routine “civil standby,” then turned it into a shooting gallery. Now he’s charged. The dogs are dead. And the video is everywhere.
Palestine Police Officer Harold Holland, 36, faces a first-degree assault charge after authorities say he fired multiple rounds inside Haley Smallwood’s home in late July, killing her Rottweiler Max and pit bull Nala. He was booked into the St. Francis County Jail in early September and walked out the same day.
Holland was there while a man involved in an earlier domestic dispute retrieved belongings. That’s it. No warrant. No raid. A babysitting job that ended with seven spent casings on the floor, according to the owner.
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Smallwood’s account is blunt. The dogs were accidentally let out of another room. Max, the Rottweiler, walked up, sniffed the officer, and let out what she called a “slight growl.” She reached down to grab him.“Before I could even get my hand on him, the officer pulled his gun out and started shooting,” she told WREG. “He shot Max five times. He continued to shoot as he was on the ground.” Then Holland went around the corner and shot Nala twice — once in the spine. Smallwood said she was standing right next to Max when the first shots rang out. Six children were inside the house, including her three young kids.
Holland’s side: the dogs were aggressive. Smallwood calls that garbage. She says she warned him the dogs were in the house. They barked when he approached. They never attacked. “They never attacked anyone,” she said. “I feel like he killed my dogs for no reason. He was trigger-happy.”
Bodycam footage circulating on X and YouTube shows the chaotic aftermath — officers outside, voices cracking, the kind of “oh my God” you hear when a situation has already gone sideways. The raw clip that exploded this week is long, unfiltered, and ugly. Viewers are not subtle about it.
Palestine Police Chief Jeff Nichols shipped the internal investigation to the St. Francis County Sheriff’s Office. Prosecutors decided a charge was warranted. Whether Holland is still wearing a badge is an open question; the department wasn’t talking. Smallwood requested the bodycam through a public records request weeks ago. She’s still waiting.
This wasn’t a charging pit bull in a dark alley. This was two family dogs in a living room with children present and the owner standing close enough to catch a stray round. Officers deal with unpredictable animals every day. Most don’t empty a magazine inside a house to do it.
The charge is assault for firing so close to Smallwood, not animal cruelty. That’s the system talking. The family is still burying Max and Nala. The video keeps spreading. And a lot of people watching it are asking the same question: if this is how a “civil standby” goes in Palestine, Arkansas, what happens when the stakes are actually high?
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