AR-News: (CO) Dog dispute turns deadly

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~1742846,00.html 


Neighbor who complained of barking held in Ault man's slaying 
By Coleman Cornelius, Denver Post Northern Colorado Bureau 

Special / Matthew Staver
Police say Ault resident Richard Hammock, 48, was killed Sunday by a shotgun 
blast through the front door of this house as he argued with neighbor Eric 
Griffin, 33, over the shooting of Hammock’s dog. Hammock’s house is in 
background.



AULT - Richard Hammock loved his two dogs and cat so much that every night he 
fell asleep cuddled up with them. 
He and Mojo, a lively miniature pinscher, had a game in which they ran around 
a backyard tree with Mojo yipping at what the family called "his invisible 
squirrel," a game that delighted both Hammock and his dog.
On Sunday evening, Mojo's barking became the center of a deadly dispute 
between neighbors. The dispute left Hammock, 48, dead from a 12-gauge shotgun blast 
to the chest and his neighbor Eric Griffin, 33, in the Weld County Jail on 
suspicion of second-degree murder, Ault Police Chief Tracey McCoy said Monday.
"It was so unnecessary," Hammock's wife, Diane, said as she sobbed and was 
embraced by distraught family members and friends in her living room on Monday. 
"Why? I just don't understand."


It is the first homicide in memory in Ault, a burg of 1,435 residents that is 
surrounded by northern Colorado farm fields and is referred to on town signs 
as "A Unique Little Town."
"A guy blown away over this is incredible," said McCoy, whose department had 
never received a dog complaint from Griffin.
Dogs often are the source of neighborhood discord, but "you don't usually 
lose lives over it," the police chief said.
Survivors said Griffin complained about the Hammocks' dogs only once - to the 
couple's daughter while they were in Hawaii celebrating their 25th wedding 
anniversary in September.
"If you don't do something about the barking, I'm going to do something to 
fix it," Felicia Christopherson said Griffin told her. Christopherson said she 
was stunned because she didn't think the dogs were a problem.
Griffin, a jeweler who lives in a converted library on Ault's main street, 
shot and seriously wounded Mojo with a pellet gun on Sunday afternoon because he 
was angry about the dog's barking, McCoy said.
Hammock, a traffic coordinator at the Wal-Mart distribution center in 
Loveland, did not immediately realize the dog had been shot. Mojo bolted yelping 
through the couple's dog door and collapsed on the kitchen floor as Diane Hammock 
stood on a ladder painting the room, she said.
The Hammocks rushed Mojo to a veterinary clinic, where an X- ray revealed 
that the dog's sudden pain and breathing trouble came from a pellet that had 
pierced his lungs and lodged in his side, Diane Hammock said. The couple left Mojo 
at the vet clinic, unsure whether he would live.
When the Hammocks returned home about 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Richard told Diane, 
"Honey, call the Police Department so we can make a report" about Mojo getting 
shot, she recalled. He was going out to park the car, he told her.
Instead, Hammock grabbed a 2- by-2 and, wielding the piece of lumber, went 
next door to confront Griffin about the dog's wound, McCoy said.
Griffin came to the door with a shotgun, police said. The men apparently 
quarreled through the door - an old library door with multiple glass panes - 
Griffin on one side with his gun and Hammock on the other with his 3-foot stick.
It appears that Griffin fired at Hammock once through the door, McCoy said. 
The shotgun blast hit Hammock in the chest from no more than a few feet away, 
the police chief said.
Diane Hammock said she heard a loud noise that sounded like shattering glass. 
Her 10-year-old granddaughter heard it, too, and asked, "What was that?"
Diane Hammock went to investigate and found her husband lying on the 
neighbor's stoop in a pool of blood, with emergency vehicles already arriving from 
nearby stations.
"He loved animals so much. Our pets were just like our kids," Hammock said of 
her husband. "I just want people to know he was a good person. He didn't 
deserve this."









"I would not enter on my list of friends the man who needlessly sets foot 
upon a worm." - Cowper
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