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Girard judge to rule on case of Vienna dog killed by pastor's bullets
By Ed Runyan
GIRARD
The attorney for Pastor David Murphy, who fatally shot his neighbor’s dog last year outside his home in Vienna Township, said Murphy will pay “without hesitation” the $350 the owner paid for the dog.
He also will cover the $450 in medical expenses she paid to have the dog treated and euthanized after the shooting.
But the law does not require the pastor to pay unrelated veterinary expenses, lost wages for the dog’s owner or other compensation, Atty. Gary Rich told Judge Jeffrey Adler of Girard Municipal Court on Friday.
The discussion took place at a hearing on “damages” Ohio law requires Murphy to pay to compensate the dog’s owner for the loss of the pet. Murphy has said he shot near the dog because it was menacing his chickens, but the owner said the dog suffered three gunshot wounds, one that severed its spine. Murphy did not attend the hearing.
A misdemeanor criminal charge was filed against Murphy, but Judge Adler later dismissed it at the request of the prosecutor.
The dog’s owner, Kimberly Ellis of nearby Warren-Sharon Road, testified Friday she paid $500 for two veterinary visits unrelated to the shooting – for an infection and skin condition. Ellis also couldn’t work for a couple of days, so she lost wages, she testified.
In all, her attorney, Samuel Bluedorn, asked the judge to award Ellis $1,630 and any other amount the judge deems proper.
“I believe the medical bills before the incident and lost wages are not relevant,” Rich told the judge.
Bluedorn questioned Ellis at length about the incident, which occurred Oct. 24 on Niles-Vienna Road.
The dog, a young black Labrador retriever named Tucker, slipped away while she was outside working, Ellis said. She looked for him, then heard four gunshots.
She recognized Tucker’s “yelp” after each of the first three shots. She found him 200 feet off of the Murphy property and 500 feet from the chicken coop, which Bluedorn later said was a “fortress” that would have prevented the dog from harming the chickens.
Ellis said veterinarians told her the dog could not have traveled more than a few feet with his spine injury.
She testified that losing Tucker was hard because he was her “faithful companion,” and he “seemed to know what I was thinking all the time.”
In a closing statement, Bluedorn said the law governing the shooting of Tucker treats him as property, like a sheep. “I think you can see from the pain this has caused my client that this was more than property,” Bluedorn said.
Rich said none of this would have happened if the dog had been leashed as Ohio law requires.
Judge Adler said he would rule on the amount of damages within seven days.
But he also said he didn’t “believe for a minute” that the pastor only fired over the dog’s head to scare him away. “I think he intended to hit the dog. He fired four times and hit the dog three times.” He also said he doesn’t agree with the way the Ohio law involved is written.
The website Justicefortucker.org contains a petition with more than 5,000 signatures that Ellis hopes will help convince Ohio lawmakers that the current law should be rewritten to limit the conditions under which someone can shoot a dog.