Benjamin Jordan and his hero dog Killian.
When Benjamin and Hope Jordan moved to Charleston, SC with their then 7-month-old son, they needed to find a babysitter. They interviewed and hired 22-year-old Alexis Khan, whose background check came back clean. A few months after hiring Khan, the Jordans noticed that their dog Killian was becoming very aggressive toward the sitter. "About 5 months into her being our babysitter, we started to notice that our dog was very defensive of our son whenever she would come in the door. He was very aggressive towards her and a few times we actually had to physically restrain our dog from going towards her."
The Jordan's became suspicious and hatched a plan to what was going on in their home with their son Finn. They decided to put an iPhone under the sofa cushion to record what occurred during the day and were shocked at what they heard. "It started with cussing," Jordan said. "Then you hear slap noises and his crying changes from a distress cry to a pain cry. I just wanted to reach through the audio tape, go back in time and just grab him up."
Khan was arrested and after hearing the audio recording, confessed to the crime. She was sentenced to one to three years in prison and must register as a child abuser and will not be allowed to work with children in the future.
"He is a very personable dog, so for him to show aggression toward anyone is a sign that something was wrong," Jordan explains. "We hope other parents …can learn from our lesson."
Jordan is thankful to Killian, a black Lab and German Shepherd mix, for alerting them to the situation. "Had our dog not alerted us to the trouble. Had my wife's instincts had not said we need to make something happen; it could have been Finn that was killed by the babysitter. You never know," says Jordan.