To Whom It May Concern:
This is a statement of events that
occurred
on my property while my family and I were away to attend a wedding, I am
Lyle E. Matheny “Ed”.
We were set to leave in the morning Tuesday, Feb.12 to
go to my sister's wedding in Florida. The wedding was going to be on the 14th
of Feb. We were to return early the following Sunday, the 17th.
We had two dogs, one whose name was Pooh Bear, a brown dog. She was eight
years old and was given to my Son by me as a puppy. My Son loved his dog
and would always give it lots of attention. Bear was part Chow and some sort of
Sheppard, I think maybe Irish Sheppard. When we got her, early on we tried to
make her an inside dog but it didn’t take us to long to learn that she
would end up being an outside dog. She liked it outside, mostly because of
all the fur she had, I believe. When she was about a year old, I saw a
commercial on TV for a Radio Fence for dogs. I thought, 'boy that is a nice
idea' because the dog would get much more exercise. So I went to the pet
store and purchased a Radio Fence and installed it myself. I installed it
so that she had the run of about ¼ of our side and back yard, the south east side. Inside this perimeter was her large dog house that
my Son and I had built for her. She was on this system for seven years, it
worked great and I figured it was great for her as well. The only time this
fence failed to work was maybe two or three times in those seven years, and a couple
of those times she may have wondered as far as to the neighbor's yard and
that was it. If she did, a neighbor would call me and I would come home and
tie her up until I could replace the batteries in her collar.
Before we left to go to Florida, I had checked the
weather for a week in advance so I knew that it was going to be warm
enough that I didn’t need to heat our dogs' water. We have a very large
waterier that we use if we are going to be away and a large automatic
feeder. My son had asked the neighbor boy (the pastors son) if he would
kind of keep an eye on our dogs for us while we were away. We weren’t
asking him to do anything other than make sure they were in our yard,
“keep an eye out for them”. I also knew that a friend whom lives a block away would keep an eye on them for us
as well.
At just about 4 pm on Friday the 15th I
receive a call on my cell phone while I was in Florida. It was my brother
calling to tell me that he had just heard a message on the answering
machine from the police department that our dog was loose. My brother was
on the job and could not get to Lowden at that moment - he needed to return
the company vehicle and get his own. So he called my mom to ask her to
call the Cedar County sheriff to let them know that someone was on their
way, my mom made that call at 4:15 pm. She also called and asked my other
brother who lives in Davenport to go to Lowden. Just after I got the
call from my brother, I had called Information from my cell phone in
Florida for the phone number to the sheriff. When I called and told her
who I was and what the call pertained to she (the dispatcher) acted as if
she had no idea what I was talking about. I told her that someone from
the Clarence Police Department just left a message on my answering machine
and said that my dog was loose and they were going to destroy it. She then
said that she would try to get a hold of someone from the Clarence Police
Department while she put me on hold. She came back to the phone a stated
that she could not get a hold of anyone. I told her that I felt a sense
of urgency and to please keep trying, that someone was on their way and to
please not shoot our family dog. That was the end of that phone call.
At about 4:50 pm my mom called the dispatcher again
to reiterate that someone was indeed on their way. The dispatcher told her
not to bother, that the situation had been dealt with. My mom asked what
that was supposed to mean? The dispatcher would not say. My mom asked, are
you saying we do not need to go to Lowden? The dispatcher said that is
correct. My mom called my brothers to tell them to turn around. I, on the
other hand, was still waiting for someone to call me back with an update.
My phone rang at about 4:55 pm, it was the police chief involved “chief of
police”. When I answered, he acted as if he was just returning my call, I
told him that the last message I got was that he was going to destroy our
dog. Then before I could even take a breath he said “I DID”.
I went into immediate
shock and disbelief. I said “What did you go and do that for you SOB that
was my son’s dog and that it was the best dog I had ever seen. There are
going to be some answers to this one” Then the phone went dead, he had
hung up on me. The phone call lasted maybe 15 or 20 seconds.
The dispatcher had both my mom's phone number and mine
all the way from at least 4:10 or 4:15 and no one made another call to her
or me before they shot and killed our pet.
My Son and I were still in shock, we wanted to come
home right away but there was just no way for us to leave any sooner.
On Saturday morning at about noon, I get a call from
my mom saying that she got a call from the police chief, (lives in
Lowden) (so he did have her number) saying that the other dog was loose. I
figured she had seen the other dog get shot and probably spent the whole night
trying to get loose. I told my mom that someone needed to please get there
right away because they already had shot one of our dogs. I couldn’t
stress the urgency or the helplessness I felt enough. I told her to call
the dispatch right back, she said that she had. I asked her to please call
again and to ask them specifically not to shoot our dog. I then got on my
phone and called my brother in Davenport and asked him to rush to my
house.
I called someone from Clarence to go to my house and
I had someone call a friend who lives one block away to hurry over to my
house to prevent the other dog from getting killed. I think my friend was the
first one to arrive, then Al from Clarence, then my brother. When everyone
got there the dog was loose but in our yard and there were no police
present. “Thank god”. My brother put our dog in the van and took her home
to his house, knowing that she would be safer there than in Lowden.
My brother called me to let me know that he had her
and that she was safe. Not knowing what they did with our other dog I
asked him if they had left her laying in the yard? He said that he didn’t
see her.
We got back Sunday morning to Lowden. I walked around
the back of my property to see if I could find any clues as to what had
happened. Right away in my driveway I found a blood spot where they had
shot her. I could also see the trail of blood where they had dragged her
to the ally. After not being able to find my Son’s dead dog I called the
sheriff’s department and asked her if she would get someone at the Police
Department so I could find out what they had done with our dog. She again
put me on hold while she tried to reach someone. After a moment she came
back on and stated that she couldn’t get anybody from the Clarence Police
Dept. and that she guessed that it meant that she didn’t have anyone on
call. So all day Sunday went by and I still did not know where they put
our dog. On Monday, the 18th someone from the Police Department
called me and said he was returning my call. I told him who I was and that
the Clarence Police Department had shot our dog and that I wanted to know
where she was and that I wanted a copy of the Police report. He stated
that he didn’t know anything and would need to talk to the chief. Later on
that day the same person called me back and said that the chief
said he would give me a call as soon as he was finished with his days off.
So I still did not know where they put out pet.
Tuesday, the 19th, in the morning I get an
anonymous call while at work in Tipton wanting to know if I would like to
know where our dog was at. I said of course I would, and that I have not been
able to find out. They said that she was thrown up against the fence down
at the sewer plant in Lowden. They said they thought I might like to know
so we could go get her because the weather had been warm. I had heard that
the Mayor was involved in this as well so I thought I would call him to
see if he would tell me where she was before I went to get her. He did,
and then said “that thing sure was mad that day”. I went and found Bear
just thrown against the gate post. She was just thrown there like a piece
of trash. We took her home and buried her.
Finally, on Wednesday, The chief called me back. When he
did, he seemed as though he was just returning my call and what did I want?
I told him that I wanted to see a copy of the Police report. He told me
that since it seems that there was a lawyer involved, I couldn’t see it
until he talked to his lawyer. End of conversation. Two weeks later, I
finally got to see the police report.
In closing, I would like to say that so far I have
never come across anyone else that says they saw our dog out of the yard.
And my neighbor stood and watched them kill our dog on our property from
her window. She has stated that our dog never charged them and was just
trying to figure out what these people were doing on her property. In fact,
she tells of the dog trying to get under the car to get away, not charging
at them.
I would also like to say that I am a 42 year old
Father, Veteran and Citizen that has had a dog all of his life and that
Pooh Bear was one of the best, and that she was a family member. She died
protecting our property, while on our property from a Cop, a Mayor and a
Minister, armed with a baseball bat, a gun and a rope. And to think that
two of these people are supposed to be public servants and one who is
supposed to be a servant of even a higher authority. Those involved in
killing this pet should be ashamed of themselves…
Lyle E.
Matheny (Ed)
