Shooting of dog in rural Indiana puts neighbor against neighbor

Two neighbors in rural Indiana are reacting to the shooting death of a champion labrador retriever. They agree what happened -- Tony Williams shot the dog -- but the fallout for the two men is very different.

Nick Werner reports for The Star Press that since the shooting, Williams has received death threats and hate mail. Williams told police that the dog, named Moose, was behaving agressively. The owner of the dog, Jimmy Jessie, said the dog accidentally got out of their yard and wandered to his neighbor's farm. Williams and his wife, Pam, told Werner that the reaction to the shooting has left them prisoners in their own farmhouse. Users of the online social media website Facebook created at least three related pages, including "Tony Williams of Spiceland is a JERK!!!!!," which has 320 members. The Williamses disconnected their old phone number after they said they received 30 threatening calls, and the couple showed The Star Press hate mail from St. Paul, Minn., advocating that Tony Williams suffer the same fate as the dog did.

Sheriff Butch Baker said these kinds of shootings are not unusual. "We have these all the time," he said. "They are not uncommon occurrences." Baker's own St. Bernard, which had a history of leaving the sheriff's property, was shot by a neighbor two years ago, writes Werner. In the three weeks since Moose died, two other dogs in Henry County have been shot and killed by a neighbor with no fanfare. The sheriff could not recall a case in which anyone had been prosecuted for shooting a dog on his property. (Read more)