Ray&Luie
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Troper shoots dog
"A friend of mine from Lexington sent me this this morning"
This article was in the Appalachian News-Express out of Pikeville, Kentucky this morning
Thursday April 10, 2008
Police investigate coon hound shooting
By Russ Cassady Staff Writer
Officials have said an investigation is underway into the shooting of a Pike man’s hunting dogs by a Kentucky State Police trooper in Letcher County.
Arnold Coleman of Virgie said he was hunting for raccoons using his dogs in Pike County on March 29, when the signal on the tracking collars he used on the dogs went dead.
“I stayed out all night looking for them,” Coleman said.
Despite not being able to find the dogs, he continued to look for them.
“Most of the time when you lose hunting dogs, when they get wore out, they track themselves back,” he said.
After finally picking the signal back up at an area of Letcher County, he began looking for the dogs there, and was having no luck calling them when a Kentucky State Police Trooper who lived in the area where the signal was found stopped him.
The trooper, whom Coleman would not name, told him the dogs were dead and handed Coleman their tracking collars in a bag, before telling Coleman he knew they were dead because he had shot them.
“Everything in me went dead,” he said. “And my daughter started bawling.”
Coleman claims the trooper told him the dogs had “treed” a raccoon and were barking, keeping him awake, when the trooper finally shot them.
“I told him, ‘You didn’t just kill one of the best hunting dogs in the country, you killed a family pet too,’” Coleman said.
Coleman said he brought the dogs back to his Pike County home, where he buried them, then tried to begin to get someone to look into the case.
KSP Post 13 Commander Capt. Jerry Bailey confirmed this week that the agency is looking into the situation.
“There has been an incident brought to our attention and it is currently being investigated,” Bailey said.
However, as the case is still being investigated, he could not comment on the facts or on Coleman’s allegations.
Kentucky law states that any peace officer or animal control officer can seize or destroy a dog found running at large between the hours of sunset and sunrise and not under the control of its owner or handler.
However, the law also states that officer is under a duty to make a fair and reasonable effort to determine whether any dog found at large between sunset and sunrise is a hound or other hunting dog which has become lost temporarily from a pack or has wandered from the immediate control of its owner.
Also, if he is reasonably sure the dog is a hunting dog, he cannot kill the dog unless it is pursuing or wounding livestock or poultry or is attacking human beings.
Coleman said this week he does not want to name the trooper until he is sure of his rights.
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04-10-2008 01:55 PM
