Medina County mother demands justice after man shoots her dog to death when it went into his yard

MEDINA COUNTY, Ohio (WOIO) - A Medina County woman is desperate for justice after she says her neighbor shot her dog to death when he ran into his backyard while she was on vacation, but as far as Ohio law is concerned, the shooter did nothing wrong.

“A Bernese Mountain dog got loose, and I heard two gunshots and I looked over and this dog was just literally chasing, it didn’t kill or anything a chicken and he just point blank shot it twice and he died in my arms,” a neighbor who witnessed the shooting told deputies. “I ran over, I said ‘is that a dog?’”

Bentley was Laura Grindle’s 1-year-old Bernese Mountain dog, and he meant everything to her.

“I’ve had a lot of loss in my life, and I can tell you this has been one of the most life-changing ones for me,” Grindle said. “It’s hard to wrap your mind around this kind of loss you know logically it doesn’t make sense, emotionally it’s so painful to think about having a member of your family suffer.”

Grindle and her family were on vacation.

Her mother-in-law was watching her dogs at their Wadsworth home.

On March 31, the two dogs got out.

“I’ve gone to counseling,” Grindle admitted. “I’ve started that because it’s just been unbearable at times. I’ve missed work. We came back and it was the solar eclipse, and I was inside making phone calls trying to figure out how to make his death matter.”

The dogs ended up in a neighbor’s yard on Leatherman Road, and that’s when the family who lives next door heard the gunshots.

“I was putting my son to bed, and I just watched our neighbor shoot a dog,” a neighbor told 911.

“How many times do you think he shot it?” a deputy asked the witnessed it.

“He f***ing shot it,” she said. “Definitely two... I mean, you could see the one bullet wound and I ran over and it died in my arms.”

Medina County Sheriff’s deputies realized right away that this man would not be criminally charged.

In Ohio Goddard’s law makes it a fifth degree felony to knowingly cause harm to a companion animal... but none of that matters if the pet is not yours and on your property.

“The whole caveat to this is if the dog is on your property, you’re allowed to shoot it,” a Medina Sheriff’s deputy said in the body camera video.

We are not naming the man because he has not been charged.

He told deputies the dog was attacking his chickens.

He claims he even fired a warning shot, but the neighbor who witnessed it told police he never did. Deputies did find a dead chicken on his property.

“I did finally shoot at him when he was running and I hit him, but he was still alive, so I shot him so he wouldn’t suffer,” the man told a deputy in a body camera video.

Grindle doesn’t believe it.

“No 1,000% not,” she said. “He’s afraid of puppies.”

19 News did call the man who shot Bentley to see if he wanted to talk with me, but so far, we haven’t heard back.

“I can’t get him back,” Grindle said. “It’s not going to fix our heartbreak. But if I can change something or make everyone aware that there’s an injustice to this law, that there is some type of change that needs to be done to prevent another family from going through this tragedy.”

Deputies told the man if he had shot this dog anywhere besides on his property this would’ve been an entirely different story but that’s not much comfort for Grindle and her heartbroken family.