CALHOUN COUNTY, Fla. (WMBB) — A Calhoun County man believes that he is the victim of racism after his dog was killed, and the letter “N” was engraved into his driveway. Leon Bush believes that someone carved the “N”, as a symbol for the N-word.

On Monday morning, he woke up to his dog lying in the grass, dead. He said the dog’s mouth was bloody.

“It kind of fears me,” Bush said. “You know you’re around your family and this is happening. That dog could’ve been me.”

Bush said that now he is wary to leave his home.

“You can’t leave your house, you know somebody could get behind you, your dog might be dead, your house might be burned down,” Bush said.

This isn’t the first time that Bush has dealt with racism, he said. 

“The same thing happened here, what December of ‘19,” Bush said. “We had a piece of plyboard over there and the next morning we got up and it had an N on it. You know so this has been a continuous thing, over and over, over and over.”

The Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the crime, but is currently calling it “criminal mischief” rather than a hate crime.

“This is very isolated and I’m happy to say that,” Calhoun County Sheriff Glenn Kimbrel said. “You know this is a very good community, we all get along well. Again this is an isolated incident but we do want to get on top of it and make sure that there’s not anything underlying occurring that we need to know about.”

However, they are working to ensure that Bush’s property is safe and equipped to catch any further attackers. 

“There’s some concerns absolutely that anyone would come on anybody’s property and leave any type of graffiti, and or leave anything behind that they shouldn’t,” Kimbrel said.