There are laws about being able to protect your livestock. However, this was just wrong. Yet if only the owner of the dog had worked harder to make sure the dog didn't get out of the yard...he failed in his responsibility also. It wasn't the first time the dog got out. How pathetic...poor Ginger...she didn't deserve to die for human stupidity.
Denyce
Vet guilty of animal cruelty
By Domingo Ramirez Jr.
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
FORT WORTH -- A veterinarian was found guilty of animal cruelty Tuesday for killing a miniature dachshund with a log-splitting maul last year after the dog got into his backyard in Colleyville.
Mircea Volosen, 45, showed no emotion after visiting state District Judge C.C. "Kit" Cooke announced his verdict.
Volosen faces a maximum of two years in jail and a $10,000 fine.
Cooke delayed sentencing until authorities could conduct a pre-sentencing investigation. The judge announced that the investigation could take 30 days.
Volosen was taken into custody, but his attorneys expected him to be released later in the day after posting $5,000 bail.
"He's in shock," said Bryan Buchanan of Fort Worth, one of Volosen's attorneys. "He's a man who escapes from a Communist Romania to live in the land of the free, where you have a right to protect your property. And now this happens to him."
Volosen's attorneys said they would appeal the verdict.
Volosen had waived a jury trial, opting to have Cooke decide the case.
The packed courtroom, filled with mostly Volosen supporters, was quiet after the guilty verdict. One supporter walked outside the courtroom and wept.
The dachshund, named Ginger, died July 4, 2003. The dog's owner, Kevin Ball, testified Monday that Ginger had escaped his back yard at least four to six times, three times ending up in Volosen's backyard.
Ball told the judge that he apologized when Ginger ran into Volosen's backyard, then watched in disbelief as Volosen killed the dog.
"The dog was headed back to her owner," said Walt Junker, a Tarrant County assistant district attorney. "He (Volosen) took the law into his own hands."
The veterinarian's wife, Natalia Volosen, told Cooke on Monday that four chickens the couple kept in the yard died after the trauma of being chased by the 2-year-old dachshund.
Colleyville police officer Kevin Roy Walling testified that there were no dead chickens in Volosen's back yard on July 4, 2003.
Volosen did not testify Monday. He has said that there had been problems with loose dogs getting into his backyard, where he kept a rabbit and laying hens.
But Ball and a neighbor, Robert Johnson, told Cooke that they heard chickens fluttering in Volosen's back yard just seconds after Ginger turned up missing from Ball's back yard.
Ball has filed a civil lawsuit against Volosen, who works in Plano and has since moved away from the Colleyville neighborhood.
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