There are few things more sickening than people who hurt defenseless animals. And most of us agree that those who do deserve to be punished to the full extent of the law. One such case involves Indiana woman, Hayden Howard, who is the loving owner of 100-pound English Mastiff, Jackson. Jackson is less than a year old. Recently he was out playing in the fenced-in backyard. Soon Hayden noticed that Jackson had begun to act strangely. She tried to pet him, only to have him flinch. She noticed odd marks on his body, and then blood.
“He had some marks on him and we thought they were bug bites and stuff,” she said. “Well then Saturday night, I saw started noticing holes on him.”
Hayden soon took Jackson to the veterinarian. That’s when the vet removed 20 BBs and 7 pellets from his body! There were so many that almost all of Jackson’s fur had to be shaved. The police were immediately called.
Though he had a shocking 27 projectiles removed from his body, the police later told Hayden they believed he had been shot at over 60 times, with some of the shots either still inside Jackson, and some having bounced off the dog’s skin.
“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,” Hayden recalls. “I was in shock, I didn’t even know what to think.” Hayden said that they removed BBs from all sorts of spot on her dog—his eyelid, his ears, his knee. Jackson’s owner was in complete shock and left speechless.
But then the story got darker. Police estimated the direction from which the shots had come–from directly next door. After getting a search warrant, law enforcement was able to enter the house. They found evidence that was connected to Hayden and Jackson’s case, but that’s not all. Police also found methamphetamine, marijuana and drug paraphernalia at the scene. One man was arrested but refused to answer questions about who had shot Jackson.
“We’ll see if some of that evidence can possibly be sent to the Indiana State Police lab for examination, and potentially do some follow up interviews and go from that point,” said Seymour Police Detective Sergeant C.J. Foster.
Hayden Howard was shocked. She said the neighbors have always been good to Jackson, and that their daughter had even walked him several times.
Luckily, Jackson is doing just fine. Hopefully justice will be done and those who perpetrated such a heinous act of animal cruelty will pay for their actions.
