Hayden Howard let her 100 lb English Mastiff pup back inside from her fenced yard and noticed he was covered with dozens of small lumps. She was afraid Jackson, who is still less than a year old, had been attacked by a swarm of stinging insects, but he didn’t have any trouble walking and wasn’t showing any signs of distress.
“He had some marks on him and we thought they were bug bites and stuff,” Hayden said to local Indiana Fox affiliate Fox 59. “Well then Saturday night, I saw started noticing holes on him.”
She took Jackson to the vet and was shocked to discover the true culprit, dozens of BBs and pellets. “They were just kind of looking at all the little holes and stuff and the more they shaved him, they just kept finding more and more,” she said. “I was in shock, I didn’t even know what to think.”
The veternarian removed a total of 20 BBs and 7 pellets from the young dog’s skin. “There was one under his eyelid, there was one in his ear, one in his knee, they were all over underneath of him,” Hayden said. “They came out there and he handed me this little cup and showed me all these little BBs and I just didn’t know what to say or what to do.”
Heartbroken and angry, Hayden filed a police report. Investigators came to her house and found several more BBs embedded in a tree in her back yard. One of the officers told her that the shooter likely fired twice as many projectiles or more while torturing her dog. These extra BBs acted like a fingerprint and allowed the officers to follow the angle of the shots back to the shooter.
The culprit was none other than Hayden’s neighbor, Timothy Woodard. Police obtained a warrant and arrested the 44-year-old man on drug charges after authorities found Woodard in possession of methamphetamine, marijuana, and other drug paraphernalia.
Woodard was not immediately charged with Jackson’s shooting. “We are in the process of going through that evidence and some of it may be sent to the Indiana State Police lab for further examination,” Detective C.J. Foster told The Tribune.
Police hope to bring animal cruelty charges against Woodard soon.
Dr. Steve Sunbury, the veternarian who tended to Jackson’s wounds, spoke with WHAS 11 about the severity of the crime. “Once in a while we’ll have an animal, maybe a hunting animal that has some gunshots, nothing anywhere near this,” he said.
Dr. Sunbury said that Jackson doesn’t appear to be in any pain and will make a full recovery. Hayen is thankful to see Jackson doing well, but she is still disgusted by Woodard’s actions. “You’d have to be a very sick person to do that,” she said.