Thursday, May 8, 2008

 

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Reward
in dog
killing up
to $3,000

In the face of the recent torture and death of a family pet in the Tobacco Valley, people from far and wide are rallying their resources.
The reward for the arrest of the killer is up from $500 to $3,000.
“The phone has not quit ringing,” said Wendy Anderson, manager of the Eureka Animal Shelter. “We can’t believe the outpouring. It renews your faith in mankind, that people really care about this kind of thing.” Anderson said that she has received calls from as far as Idaho, Great Falls, and Helena from concerned people offering support and reward money.
The body of the young female black lab was found Saturday, April 26, by a picnicker. It was lying in six inches of water beneath Pigeon Bridge on the Tobacco River. Large amounts of splattered blood were found around a post above the bridge, and bloody paw prints marked a pipe that ran along the side of the bridge. Judging by this evidence, authorities deduced that the dog was severely beaten with a weapon, drug to the side of the bridge, dangled over the edge while the dog struggled to get back up, and dropped to its death 20 feet below. “This person wanted the animal to suffer,” said Anderson.
The family that owned the dog identified her through photographs last week. According to Anderson, the dog disappeared from the residence - why or how she wandered away is unknown. The owners wish to refrain from press comment.
Lincoln County Detective Jim Sweet of Libby said that he had no leads pointing toward the killer at this point. The case has, however, drummed up a lot of interest. He has had retired cops throughout Montana calling him about the case, he said. “There’s a lot of interest in this,” he pointed out. “It’s really nice to see.”
“It won’t stop until (the killer) is found,” stated Lori McNicol, president of Friends of the Shelter, the non-profit organization that manages the Eureka Animal Shelter.
Anderson agreed. She assured that even as the publicity and interest in the case died down, the investigation would not. “We’re not going to let this rest,” she said. “We’re not going to let it go away.”
Meanwhile, she warned, people should keep a close eye on their animals. “We want the community to hold their pets closer,” Anderson said. “Especially while this monster’s at large.”

Along similar lines, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the killings of seven dogs in the Libby and Troy areas. The dogs were found over a period of five weeks in March and April. Six of the dogs were found apparently killed by a bullet. Only one dog has yet been identified by its owner. The Montana Animal Care Association and the Humane Society of the United States are offering a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or people responsible for these deaths.
Anderson speculated that the recent torture and the multiple dog shootings in the Libby and Troy areas were not related.

 

Road petition denied

By Steve Newman
Of the Tobacco Valley News

LIBBY — On a split vote county commissioners last week rejected a petition with some 157 signatures from Eureka residents seeking the abandonment of a controversial road on Sinclair Creek.
Commission Chairman Rita Windom of Libby supported a motion by Commissioner Marianne Roose of Fortine to reject the formal request by area residents and affected property owners. Troy Commission John Konzen cast the dissenting vote.
It was the second vote on the petition. A decision last May by Roose and Windom to reject the petition prompted a lawsuit in District Court, where Judge Michael Prezeau agreed with the plaintiffs that commissioners acted last year on faulty legal advice and failed to consider the actual merits behind the abandonment. In that first vote, commissioners asserted they had no choice under the law, but in the ensuing legal challenge they claimed to have exercised discretion.
Last October Prezeau ordered the commissions to reconsider those merits, which became the purpose of the April 30 meeting at the courthouse.
Although commissioners rendered their decision in Libby, Eureka plaintiffs Dick and Marie Stavenow and Jim and Diane Stauffer attended, and they expressed disappointment after the vote.
And they were critical of the process. The majority again failed to consider the merits of the petition as ordered by the court, said attorney Dan Wilson. It was a decision that sided with the big corporation over the individual property owner, said Wilson, who added that his clients will consider further legal action.
According to Wilson, Konzen was the only commissioner who considered any of the reasons behind the petition.
Referring to an earlier public hearing in Eureka, Konzen noted that the land developer, Tungsten Holdings of Libby, acquired its Sinclair Creek property in 2004 with a 20-foot access.
Konzen acknowledged that the easement granted by the seller obviously restricted development. Large subdivisions require a wider road with up to a 60-foot easement.
But that's the way the seller sold the property and the way the owner bought it, Konzen reasoned. Only later did Tungsten Holdings learn of the nearby right-of-way of the county's that residents once used to get to a schoolhouse in the early 1900s.
"By law you have to have access, and it was granted," Konzen said of Tungsten's purchase.
But Roose as well cited the law in her motion to reject the petition.
She instructed those present that governing bodies carry an obligation to adhere to the facts and follow the law. "I am not making a decision based on emotion," Roose said.
Roose rejected the petition to abandon because "it is still a county road," she said in her motion.
That's the position of Tungsten Holdings, which won a court ruling from Prezeau that found the old trail to the former school house was in fact still a public road, though part of it had been abandoned in the 1930s.
Yet Prezeau also found that commissioners still have the discretion to abandon it, even over the objections of Tungsten Holdings, County Attorney Bernie Cassidy reiterated several times before the commission's vote.
It was Cassidy's interpretation of the law that caused the county's first rejection of the citizen petition. At that time, Cassidy had advised commissioners they had no legal choice but to reject the petition abandonment because of Tungsten Holdings' objection as an affected landowner.
Prezeau found that interpretation in error.
Yet in breaking the tie between Roose and Konzen, Windom again referred to the commission's obligation to "govern by law."
She repeated Cassidy's assertion in the invalidated opinion that the county has no more right to abandon the road in question — called Old Sinclair Road — than it does abandoning a portion of Highway 93.
Cassidy again pointed out that the law does not preclude the road's abandonment. In fact, he said, the judge's order cited the commissioners' broad discretion in abandoning such a road. "You have the discretion to manage the road as you see fit," Cassidy said in referring to the court's order, which also noted that the road had long ago fallen into disuse and provides no access to property today..
Commissioners also have the discretion to follow the advice of the county attorney — or not, Cassidy said.