When your dog runs out the front door, or escapes his leash, you expect your neighbors to help you bring him back home. But in one warren county neighborhood, the family dog came home with a gun shot wound.
"She has permanent bone damage, muscle damage, nerve damage. She won't be able to use her leg again." Brianna Nilles returned to her rural Galesburg home a few weeks ago to find the front yard covered in blood. Nilles' dog "Dixie" had been shot by someone in the neighborhood and nearly died.
"It was honestly pretty traumatic. I've never seen that much blood in my entire life," said Nilles. Dixie ended up having two surgeries to repair an artery.
The Nilles family is furious about the shooting, but it turns out, there's not much that police can do about it.
"The animal was not on her property, it was on someone else's." Warren County Sheriff Martin Edwards says there is a law against letting your dog run wild --
"Warren County does have an ordinance for animals running at large. Dogs have to be secured under the owner's control -- fenced in or leashed-up on the property."
Sheriff Edwards said if "Dixie" was on someone else's property and became aggressive or attacked, that neighbor has the right to shoot the dog. But, if "Dixie" was simply wandering around and not bothering anybody, shooting her would be a felony.
Unfortunately, there's no way to find out what the circumstances were before "Dixie" got shot --
"Nobody actually saw who shot the dog," said Sheriff Edwards. "We did go out and do some follow-up, interviewed the neighbors a few doors down, they did not report or state that they shot the dog."
Sheriff Edwards doesn't agree with what neighbors did to "Dixie." But, without more evidence, law enforcement can't do anything else for the Nilles family or "Dixie."
"The fact that I'm being told there's nothing that can be done, it's frustrating," said Nilles. "To think that there is somebody up there that could possibly harm us, it's very scary."
