WARNING: This story contains graphic information about injuries to a dog that some readers might find disturbing.
Three dogs found to have meth and cocaine in their systems attacked a person walking down the street right after they killed a family pet in a North Kamloops backyard.
That’s what a judge was told Thursday as lawyers continued to argue about whether the condemned canines will live or die.
A Richmond Avenue family’s 12-year-old collie, Heidi, was killed in its own yard on the morning of Sept. 8 after three neighbourhood dogs jumped the fence and attacked.
The City of Kamloops seized the dogs, then labelled them dangerous and filed a destruction application in provincial court. Testing following the incident showed meth and cocaine in the dogs’ systems.
The dogs are named Snoop, Bella and Ferb. Snoop was euthanized on Christmas Day for medical reasons, leaving only Bella and Ferb’s fate in the hands of the court.
Pedestrian had to fight dogs off
In court on Thursday, Chelsea Mack, the city’s lawyer, summarized affidavits from a number of witnesses, offering the first detailed narrative of what happened.
In her affidavit, Tracy Olson, Heidi’s owner, described hearing a loud noise at about 6:15 a.m. on the day of the attack. She did not think much of it.
About 45 minutes later, according to the affidavit, Olson looked through a kitchen window into her backyard and saw three pit bulls circling Heidi, who was laying motionless. Not long after that, she said the dogs left her yard.
“At that time, an unknown man was walking down the sidewalk on Richmond Avenue and all three dogs began jumping up on him and biting at this man,” Mack said, still summarizing Olson’s evidence.
“The man began yelling and kicking and swinging his arms, and eventually the dogs ran away.”
Olson said she was still too scared to go outside at that point to check on her dog, but from inside she could see magpies beginning to pick at Heidi’s body.
“Her son grabbed a knife out of fear before going into the backyard to cover Heidi with a sheet,” Mack said.
Police and Community Services Officers arrived a short time later, Mack said, and investigators quickly tracked the dogs down to an address in the 900-block of Jasper Avenue — about 450 metres from Olson’s house on Richmond Avenue.
The Jasper Avenue address was known to police and city officials. Four CSOs and five Mounties attended and the dogs were surrendered without incident.
CSOs took pictures of Bella, Ferb and Snoop and showed them to Olson, who identified them as the dogs she saw in her backyard.
Catastrophic injuries
Court was shown graphic photos of Heidi’s injuries. The pictures were taken in Olson’s yard after investigators arrived at the scene.
Mack described the photos for the record, saying Heidi had been disemboweled and her head was covered in puncture wounds. “A significant chunk” was missing from her side.
Mack also summarized the affidavit of Dr. Megan Broschak, the veterinarian who performed Heidi’s necropsy and examined Bella, Ferb and Snoop on the day of the attack.
Court heard Broschak was unable to pinpoint a cause of death due to the extent of Heidi’s injuries, which included “many puncture wounds over her face and ears” and catastrophic injuries to her neck, including a large degloving injury and numerous punctured arteries.
Heidi was described as being covered in blood from head to tail and an X-ray also showed she had a broken vertebrae.
Hearing not done yet
Kamloops provincial court Judge Roy Dickey ruled Thursday that a self-described “dog whisperer” from Vancouver Island has standing in the case as the new owner of Bella and the conditional owner of Ferb.
In November, court heard the owners of the dogs gifted them to Ken Griffiths, who was described as having a history of taking in and rehabilitating dangerous dogs. At the time, the city described the maneuver as “a shell game.”
Dickey is tasked with deciding whether the dogs should be put down.
The hearing did not finish on Thursday. The city has one more witness to call and defence lawyer Dan McNamee has said he plans to call Griffiths as the only defence witness.
Lawyers will return to court on Jan. 20 to set a date for the continuation. Bella and Ferb remain in the custody of the City of Kamloops.
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