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They’ve gathered police reports, city ordinances and state statutes. They even have a tape of the dispatch chatter during the Nov. 22 incident on their steep wooded property.
Now the Fountain City couple have asked Buffalo County authorities to help initiate an outside investigation into the conduct of Police Chief R.J. Severude.
Buffalo County District Attorney Tom Clark directed calls to Sheriff Bernie Brunkow, who did not return phone messages left Monday and Tuesday.
Mayor Carl Brommerich said the city’s insurance company is investigating the incident but that there is no criminal investigation of Severude.
“Were disappointed that the facts are available and people are not looking at those facts,” Angela McGuire said.
An insurance agent called the McGuires inquiring about the dog’s age, value and breed, they said. If the city compensates them for the dog, the McGuires say they will donate the money back to the city to train an officer for animal calls.
Although Severude expressed regret for the shooting, he defended it on grounds the dog might have been injured and have rabies.
The McGuires said Severude’s defense and others’ arguments that Libby should not have been running loose are irrelevant to killing the dog.
“Every reason that he gave is not a reason to shoot a dog,” said Angela McGuire’s father, Neil Sagan of Fountain City.
Wisconsin statutes allow a person to kill a dog threatening serious bodily harm on that person’s property or threatening serious bodily harm to a domestic animal on the animal owners’ property. An officer also may kill a dog with a court order, generally granted if the dog has hurt people or other domestic animals on at least two occasions.
Statutes and ordinances making it a violation for a dog to run at large only apply when the dog is off the owners’ property. The McGuires said Severude shot the dog on their 5-acre property, based on their discovery of a blood trail and the dead dog.
According to the statutes, an officer who encounters a dog running at large, with or without tags, is to capture and impound it. An officer can kill animals under quarantine for disease. That officer “shall deliver the carcass to a veterinarian or local health department” so it can have a lab determine if it has rabies.
Severude, who hit the dog after firing four times, according to his report, did not retrieve the dog.
The dog was wearing a collar and registration and identification tags.
“It does have tags, but I can’t get it back,” Severude told the dispatcher early in the call. Severude told the Daily News the day after the shooting he “did not see a collar and tags.”
Later, he told the dispatcher: “If you heard shots fired that would be me. I had to euthanize the dog.”
Reporter Jeff Dankert can be reached at (507) 453-3513, or jdankert@winonadailynews.com.
