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Dog slain with crossbow
YOUNGSTOWN
The owners of Dorian Books and Full Circle Florist at Madison Avenue and Elm Street are devastated over the fatal shooting of their 8-year-old purebred male golden retriever with a crossbow late Sunday.
“I heard a loud snap and then a yelp,” said Rodd Coonce, bookstore and flower shop co-owner. Coonce said his dog, Teddie, was shot at 6 p.m. in the parking lot of an apartment house next to his nearby Madison Avenue residence on the city’s North Side.
The arrow went through the dog’s side and was found on the ground, Coonce said.
Nobody has been charged in the case.
“If someone has that little regard for even the life of an animal, I would be afraid they would have little regard for human life,” Coonce said, adding he has no idea what the shooter’s motive might have been.
It was an otherwise joyous weekend for Coonce and his business partner, Jack Peterson, who had just celebrated the 11th anniversary of their Music at Madison program Saturday evening at Dorian Books.
Easter also was a warm and sunny day, Coonce noted.
“It was a celebratory day, and then to have that kind of unnecessary destruction makes it hurt even more,” Coonce said.
“He was our baby. He was our boy,” Peterson said of Teddie.
Coonce told police he saw Teddie come into the yard bleeding and then collapse on his rear porch.
Police saw the dog lying dead, with blood coming from its left side. They traced the blood drops to the rear of a Pennsylvania Avenue apartment building, where they found the broken arrow with a small pool of fresh blood nearby.
City Prosecutor Dana Lantz said animal cruelty is a first-degree misdemeanor on the first offense, carrying up to six months in jail and a fine up to $1,000.
Repeat offenses are a fifth-degree felony carrying six months to a year in prison and a fine up to $2,500.
In an unrelated case also investigated by city police and the Mahoning County Dog Warden’s Office, two other dogs were found dead on the West Side. Police charged Todd Wollen, 43, of Burbank Avenue on Sunday with animal cruelty and domestic violence in that incident.
In the West Side case, police were called to a North Portland Avenue residence, where they found a woman sitting on her front porch clutching her dead dog, Grace, who appeared to have a puncture wound on her torso behind her left front paw.
The woman told police that Wollen, her live-in boyfriend of two years, killed two of her dogs and dropped off Grace at her new North Portland Avenue residence about 3:30 p.m. Sunday.
The woman told police Wollen assaulted her at her new residence Thursday afternoon, grabbing her and throwing her up against the house and through a doorway after he unsuccessfully tried to force her into his car.
The woman also told police she had to move out of Wollen’s home after Wollen pinned her down on a bed and smacked her head on its headboard April 7.
Police went to Wollen’s residence and said they found another of the woman’s dogs, Simon, dead, stuffed in a plastic bag and placed in the freezer.
Police arrested Wollen in a traffic stop in the 100 block of North Schenley Avenue at 6:30 p.m. Sunday.