Animal cruelty comes in many forms…unfortunately the animal seen in this next story became the target of a man wielding a B.B. gun and it appears it was just for fun. PNC visited the scene of the shooting Monday morning.
The Harmon Industrial Park area is an area where animals like chickens and dogs roam free. As seen in the video, the man wielding the B.B. was being coaxed by another man as the gunman took aim… the target a chicken down this street. But then, the gunman’s sights were redirected to a dog minding his own business not knowing that he was about to be shot.
The random shooting was celebrated by the men in the video in what appeared to be a show of marksmanship. PNC visited the scene and spoke with the man responsible for the shooting, his name…Damian Greer.
“So I came here to Guam to start working here, we took care of the dogs but then they start messing the place so … like I said it likes to mess and I’m tired of cleaning the mess so…,” he said.
Greer admits that what he did was a bad thing and that it won’t happen again.
But Guam Animals in Need (GAIN) President Cyrus Luhr doesn’t buy the gunman’s reason that the animal was a nuisance. He said the dog was used for target practice for fun.
“They were looking for other things to shoot. They saw a stray dog and decided to shoot it. This doesn’t, to me, in any way look like an attempt to handle an aggressive animal. This was simply a harmless stray that was non-aggressive that was at a distance and it looked like somebody was just trying to shoot a target for fun. So, no, I don’t buy in any way that this was some sort of noble attempt to handle a problem. This was somebody that was looking to injure another being for fun,” Luhr said.
He added: “It is absolutely disturbing that not only somebody filmed this and coaxed on a person to commit a crime but they shared it on social media for fun to kind of brag about themselves doing this.”
Luhr says the video raises the question: Has this happened before? How many other animals have been shot?
Greer told PNC that having the firearm on the business’ property is normal, further stating that he was not aware that shooting a dog is a crime
“If this person has a defense that he didn’t know the law and thus the law shouldn’t apply to them, that’s an argument they can make to the court. But that’s not GAIN’s role to adjudicate. Our role is to do everything we can to advocate for the welfare of animals and to protect them. And if we see casual violence in our community, we’re not going to stand by,” Luhr said.
PNC has shared the information with authorities. As of news time, no arrests have been reported. The dog injured in the video has been located and attempts are being made to coax the animal out of hiding.
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