Dear Islanders;
The following tale is tragic sad and disturbing on many levels.
Saturday morning, September 13Th my young son and I were working on our firewood. It was a beautiful Saturday morning and he and I had just enjoyed a sleep over and breakfast, just the three boys, father, son, and new puppy. As puppies can be, our new pup was not very good at obeying commands, but ridiculously friendly. He was a beautiful little Jack Russell Terrier, and replaced a dog we had just had to put down under rather unhappy circumstances...Our new buddy brought joy to our lives and was helping us overcome our recent sadness.
We live near a Woodlot that is popular with many of our island friends and neighbors as a place to walk their dogs, ride their bikes and, sometimes it’s used as a place to hunt.
That morning, two men walked out of the woodlot and down the street in front of our home, apparently returning from an un-successful deer hunt. They were walking along Cedar drive, in a family neighborhood. They had their high visibility vests on, loaded shotguns in hand. As they walked by, I recognized one of them as a man who’d been involved in an ugly incident at our home years before. He and his brother had crashed a party we had on my 40th birthday. The party had been a joyous event and in part was held to thank the many friends and neighbors who had helped and supported us during or sons successful fight with cancer. It was a joyous event, until this individual and his brother arrived.
This man and his brother assaulted several of our guests uttered numerous threats and racial slurs, and in the end assaulted me. Fortunately for me and my family, we weren’t alone. I shudder to think what could have happened if we hadn’t had some good friends to help us out.

Unfortunately for our innocent little puppy, he had no idea just what kind of individual it was who walked by his home. The naïve pup bounded out, practically stumbling over himself to say hi, jumping and licking and wagging his tail. Due to my previous experience with this man and his family I avoided any interaction and stayed put on my property, calling futilely after our puppy to come.
No sooner had the puppy and perpetrator passed from my sight behind some bush, I heard the report of a shot gun.
My twelve year old son and I were stunned. I ran around the bush to find, to my horror and shock, our 16 week old Terrier his legs quivering in death throes and his head partly blown off. Knowing our little dog, he'd probably been trying to lick the barrel of the gun that ended his life. The COWARDLY DISGRACE who shot him ran off into the bush at my first scream of, “what have you done you sick bastard, you shot our puppy!!”
You can imagine the horror and pain I felt. This pain was out weighed a thousand fold by the pain I feel for my children at having to witness this crime. I had told a friend, not the day before, how nice it was to see my kids laughing and smiling with the new pup,. Laughing like they hadn’t since before our son was diagnosed with Cancer….Now sadly we’re back to needing emotional help for our children .All thanks to this sick twisted individual.
Our family was left distraught and sobbing at the side of the road.. My daughter vomited......my poor boy had to be physically restrained because he wanted to go get the guy who killed his puppy, armed only with a pair of scissors.
I wonder if this big man with a gun would have stood up to a 12 year Cancer survivor with tears in his eyes and a pair of blunt scissors, seeking revenge.
Maybe he would he have just shot my boy too.
Or possibly he’d have left the boy fatherless had I confronted him. It’s sickening to think of.
.

Not ten minutes after the crime, the father of this fine upstanding individual showed up at our home. He immediately tried to minimize what his son had done. His apparent lack of empathy and appreciation for the pain his son had caused us was almost as sickening to us as his son’s monstrous actions.
This father actually said, "here, take my sons dog" as if that would make up for anything….He then continued "my son came home and said he shot a dog, it had to be your dog didn’t it? Now I'm going to have the cops at my house over a damned dog".
This man then tried to take away the carcass of our puppy, when confronted, he said, "what are you going to do, just let him rot there?”
Thanks to my neighbor, a brave young woman, who stopped him, he was prevented from taking away the evidence of his son’s crime and he left us to our suffering and sorrow, but not before telling us once more we were making a big deal of nothing. What a fine upstanding man….. Our tears and those of our children didn’t seem to affect him in the slightest, not a shred of compassion, decency or empathy to be seen. We were stunned and horrified.
My son is terrified. “I’m afraid of what they’ll do next time”….he is also determined to stand up in court and tell the judge how this evil man has hurt him. I will never forgive what he’s done to my kids. I’m sure most of you will share my feelings of utter contempt for a person that could do such a thing. The man is a disgrace.


The RCMP attended as promptly as possible, gathered evidence, took statements, and to the relief and shock of the entire neighborhood confiscated 25 firearms from the family home of the offender. My neighbors, to their credit used their cell phones and vehicles in a fruitless attempt to prevent the offender from evading capture, but were unsuccessful. Unlike most of us, the parents of this individual apparently didn’t feel inclined to compel their son to face the music. By the time the cops arrived on scene and the father had added a liberal dose of insult to our injury, the killer of our puppy was long gone.
We and our neighbors are determined to see some justice come to pass on this issue .This person has to be brought up short in his tracks and made to face the consequences of his brutal and deeply sick behavior. We can only hope the courts deal with this man most severely. We can not, and will not accept a bad upbringing as an excuse for his actions. He owns his behavior. He MUST be held to account.
The police have told us that recently the criminal code has been toughened with regards to animal cruelty. It has become accepted orthodoxy in criminology that offenders who have shown a propensity to cruelty to animals often progress to much more serious crimes, like abuse and violence towards women and children. Let’s hope this individual hasn’t all ready crossed those thresholds of criminality and hurt others. This was a serious crime. He’s got to be stopped.
It is our hope that this individual will not only face criminal prosecution, but also civil action.
I will be contacting the SPCA for help on this and would greatly appreciate any help materially, legally or otherwise that is offered us. I know that many of you will be sickened by this story. Any help you can give us will be greatly appreciated.
We as a family want to thank all of our good friends and neighbors who have helped us and supported us over the years, this is yet one more horror that we hope to overcome, with time and the help of our great community.
Nick Rose