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Pasado Newsletter
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Dog Shooting Update:
The King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office has filed First Degree
Felony Animal Cruelty charges against STEPHEN FRANKLIN WALLACE for
"unlawfully killing an animal causing undue suffering. Pasado's Safe
Haven's cruelty investigation, necropsy, and x-rays were used in the
filing.
Wallace has fled
Washington State and an arrest warrant has been issued. It is understood
that Wallace is in California now. If he is pulled over for speeding, or
breaks the law in any way, he won't be going home any time soon.
The full history of this story is below.
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Above,
the first neighbor who contacted Pasado's Safe Haven. He points out where
the man shot his dog. |
When most folks were preparing for friends and
family the day before Thanksgiving, we got a call from neighbors in Grotto, Washington (King
County), who were eyewitnesses to a dog who had been shot, three times, by his owner. For no reason. They called the King County Sheriff, who arrived and spoke with the neighbors and the man responsible. He claimed the dog had been hit by a car and he had to “put it out of its misery”. The neighbors said he was lying. Conveniently, the man buried the dog before the sheriff arrived. The sheriff, said there was nothing he could do since it was a “justified” killing.
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It was Mark Steinway,
Pasado's co-founder and humane officer, on Thanksgiving Day eve, who had to drive to this town, and exhume the body – to prove the animal hadn’t been hit by a car. He spent 8 hours gathering eyewitness statements.
Left, a neighbor helps
Mark with the horrible task.
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Above, the
dog's paw - the first evidence Mark found when he worked to unearth the
body.
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Mark brought the dog's body back to Pasado's Safe Haven, and gently cleaned the dirt from his body. He then drove the dog’s body to a veterinarian’s office for x-rays, to start to build a case. He wanted to PROVE that the dog hadn’t been hit by a car. And as we had guessed, there were no broken bones. No contusions. Not a scrape.
Left, Dr. Dana Bridges
radiographs the dog to help us build a cruelty case.
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Next, at 7pm that night,
Dr. Hanna Evergreen and Pasado's Safe Haven Licensed Veterinary Technician,
Ahmad Jakish, on Thanksgiving Eve,
performed the necropsy on the dog. They found the dog’s ear “wasn’t torn off” as the man claimed to the sheriff. And there were no abrasions or any other evidence of the dog being hit by a car. There were, however, three
bullet wounds.
The first bullet ripped through the dog's spleen. It caused bleeding, and pain.
The second shot went through the neck's soft tissue. The third, went straight through the heart, which finally killed the dog. The reports proved the dog
didn't die immediately. That it was scared and it suffered, until that final bullet. As neighbors attest, the man was 100 ft. away when he shot it, making a "humane" death, all but impossible.
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Mark couldn’t reach anyone in the sheriff’s office on Thanksgiving, but he did reach them the day after. He convinced the sheriff, with all of the signed, eyewitness affidavits, reports, x-rays, and necropsy report to prosecute the man. Mark will make an appointment next, to meet with the King County Prosecuting Attorney, in person, to make sure when the sheriff sends the case to him, that he’ll DO something.
Meantime, we had to buy a freezer to store the dog’s body. If the man changes his story or he gets a savvy defense attorney, we want all evidence in case the body needs re-examining.
As of this writing, we are awaiting capture of the man. Please stay tuned
to our website for updates. And thank you, for what you did to help. |
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