I hope they lock this BLEEEP up and NEVER allow him to practice law.
Neighbor shoots pit bull puppy
By Dionne Waugh
dwaugh@newsadvance.com
April 4, 2006
Hernandez Glover will never forget the last time she held her 7-month-old pit bull puppy, Canaan.
“We were on the couch. He nestled in my neck and I could feel his breath,” she recalled Monday.
“Twenty minutes later, he’s dead.”
Glover, 29, said her neighbor, Jeffrey Adam Bradley, 31, fatally shot her dog twice with a .12- gauge shotgun to make a point about dogs being in his yard.
Bradley said he shot the dog to protect himself on March 28. This is the second time in two years Bradley said he’s been forced to shoot a neighborhood dog.
Last week, Lynchburg police charged Bradley, a Liberty University law student, with two misdemeanors - recklessly handling a firearm and discharging a firearm in the city.
On Saturday, they arrested and charged him with cruelty to animals, a Class 6 felony that carries a penalty of one to five years in prison or up to 12 months in jail.
They also confiscated the shotgun used in the shooting.
“The dog put himself in a position where he was in between me and access to the house, so I had no way to retreat,” Bradley told WSLS NewsChannel 10 on Thursday.
“The dog at that time moved towards me aggressively ... he was growling and barking and seemed to be intent on ... in his mind protecting his turf. He was going to attack me. And at that time, I was forced to shoot him.”
Though people may think pit bull dogs are dangerous, Glover said her dog was not.
“I can’t even imagine his face making that expression,” she said. “I still can’t believe someone would do that to him. He’s like my baby, my third child.”
Canaan played daily with Glover’s young children and the five children she takes care of in her home day-care business, she said. Glover said Bradley also knew her dog well and knew he wasn’t dangerous.
In his interview with WSLS NewsChannel 10, Bradley said the shooting was a culmination of a series of events. He could not be reached for comment Monday.
“We have had a problem with neighbors allowing their dogs to run free through the neighborhood for quite awhile,” he said. “The dogs that have been allowed to run are pit bulls, large aggressive dogs.”
Bradley said he wished his neighbors would contain their dogs.
“I think it’s crazy that they’re upset that I fired a controlled shot at a pit bull that was about to attack me, but they’re not upset that people allow pit bulls to roam free through a neighborhood with children,” he said.
“Regardless of the age of the dog, I would estimate his weight at about 70 pounds and that dog was made of nothing but teeth and muscle. I wish I could convey the look in that dog’s eyes as he was coming at me. But if a dog could hate, that one did.”
Glover said the dog weighed less than 20 pounds, never threatened anyone and would have run away if Bradley had fired into the air or even stamped his foot on the ground. She said Canaan, an indoor dog, often escaped into the neighborhood. That’s what happened last week when she said Canaan darted out of her house when she opened the door to get Chinese food from a delivery driver. The neighbors live less than 30 feet from each other on Roxbury Street, which is off of Hill Street in Lynchburg.
Phillip Campbell, who owns two pit bulls himself, lives in a house that’s set back but between both homes. He said he was in his house, about 15 feet away, and looking out his kitchen window when he saw Bradley shoot the puppy.
“He was not blocking the door. Mr. Bradley came out his back door, raised his shotgun and shot the little puppy about five feet in front of him,” Campbell said Monday. “He did not look vicious. The dog was sitting there wagging his tail when he was shot.”
Bradley also admitted shooting Pepper, an 8-year-old Australian German Shepherd mix, who belonged to the person who lived in Campbell’s house two years earlier. He said told WSLS he shot that dog because it, too, menaced him in a similar fashion.
“It’s rather freakish for this to happen ... twice in two years,” he said.
Campbell said he’s considering moving because he and his wife are afraid to let their dogs outside. He took Bradley to court in July 2005 after he said Bradley pointed a gun at him. Bradley was found not guilty of recklessly handling a firearm.
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