It always amazes me how quickly people jump to conclusions over a news report and a youtube video... I'm just a bit more objective and not so blinded by emotion on this stuff as I take all media reports with a huge grain of salt.
Yet you basically jumped to the conclusion or at least insinuated that these dogs had been there before in your first post on the subject.
The thing I find strange is that the reports said that more than one land/cattle owner asked this man to kill those dogs.? That could have happened in a minute or two but I wonder if it did?
Nope, it only says that the developer, Mr. Carter asked the shooter to shoot any dogs that were messing with the cows.
It sure seems as though there may have been standing orders resulting from previous harassment of those cattle. Maybe not from those same dogs, but who knows?
Yep, it sounds like standing orders from Mr. Carter who apparently perceived a threat or was just paranoid.
I don't think we're hearing the whole thing. A lawyer being involved would keep the accused strictly to the point at hand, which was that he acted within the law. Going off on extraneous points to justify oneself when you have already won the arguement only opens doors to further accuations.
Now that the video has surfaced and the owner alleges that the dogs were wearing collars (again, we don't know if this is true, but it is easily verifiable or refutable by the witnesses who helped him load his dogs in a vehicle for transport to the vet), the shooter's statements that he thought they were wolves (again, there aren't any freaking wolves in Florida and wolves don't wear tags) is clearly a lie and the self defense thing looks like a lie too. If it is legal to shoot dogs harassing livestock, why not just say I had been told to shoot dogs harrassing livestock and these dogs were harrassing the livestock. And again, why continue to shoot them after they are down and after the owner has arrived and is trying to rush to their aid?
Also, did you notice the video piece starting out with a pretty picture of the guy's dog, and ending with a little cuddle on the couch with the owner? I see the dog lover's slant in the reporting and wonder what really happened, and whether or not we are hearing the whole story. We saw 45 seconds of film. This incident did not go down front to bak in 45 seconds.
The news media packaged it with a picture of the dog at the beginning, true. As for the ending, it showed the owner with at least one of the dogs. It answers the question that any viewer would have..."are the dogs OK?" and was a reasonable way to wrap up the news clip IMO. I hope that the authorities and the attorneys for both sides (should their be civil action) have a copy of the full unedited film.
Also, did you notice the owner so readily accepting his dog's fate? I wonder why that is because had they been my dogs I would have been on the guy like white on rice gun or not. He would have had to threaten to shoot me to prevent me from kicking the not out of him regardless of whether my dogs were right or wrong. At that point we would have had a whole new set of circumstances/problems to deal with.
If I was the owner I would hope that as I rushed from shot dog to shot dog I would have been painfully aware that the shooter was armed and I was not and I would have been able to control my emotions enough to keep from getting myself shot (unarmed men lose gunfights with boring regularity). If I was armed (I'm a concealed carry permit holder and am frequently armed) and I was the dog owner and he shot that dog that was already down after I was already in the field, then things would have probably gone downhill fast. That is not something to be proud of, but is a fact and "heat of the moment" would have been a great and accurate defense. However, if I was unarmed I would hope that I would have enough sense to know that me being dead wasn't going to accomplish anything. I really don't think you can draw any conclusions from the fact that the owner, a presumably unarmed man was not willing to physically attack an armed man who was already slinging lead...except that the guy knew a losing battle when he saw one.
Again, there is no justification for the final shot and I really think the one dog who was shot while running past the shooter was coming to his owner who had arrived and was calling the dogs. I think that the shooter is a liar and that he lied in his police statement and that he needs to be prosecuted for that and any other laws he may have broken during the incident. I also think he needs one heck of a pine shampoo, but that is another matter.
