San Benito County Supervisor Anthony Botelho recently shot and injured a neighbor’s two pit bulls using a shotgun outside his home after they had attacked his own dog.
Botelho recounted parts of the story at Tuesday’s county board meeting, during a discussion about a proposed administrative citation law that would expand enforcement authority for animal control officers. The District 2 supervisor at the public meeting used his experience with the dogs to underscore his support for the law.
As for his motivation to shoot the dogs after they were attacking his own pet and threatening the supervisor about two weeks ago, he said it was “clearly a property issue.” He said his wife had tried calling animal control for another issue a week prior to the shooting, and that she never heard back.
“My property was being threatened by something, somebody else’s property,” said Botelho, who lives in the San Juan Bautista area. “I think legally, I’m not a lawyer and I really don’t care. I have a right to defend my property, (with) whatever means I feel is appropriate.”
While there are local laws restricting dogs at large like the ones that apparently roamed into Botelho’s yard, laws vary from state to state regarding a person’s right to shoot or harm an animal on his or her property. Botelho’s incident, furthermore, is relatively complex because he and his pet were being threatened, but he also made it back into the home safely before retrieving his shotgun and returning to fire at the two pit bulls.
“I had my dog in my hand, and they were attacking my dogs,” Botelho recounted at the board meeting. “This is something that needs to be done. It shows that animal control is a serious issue for a lot of folks. If you’re walking down the street, you should not be attacked, or your animal should not be attacked.”
In response at the meeting, public speaker and attorney Joe Thompson opposed the administrative citation law, arguing it gives government agencies too much power. Thompson remarked that if his horses are eating apples from one of Botelho’s orchards, “you do not have permission to shoot them.”
On Wednesday, Botelho clarified details of the story in an interview with the Free Lance and said he and his Labrador-poodle mix – estimated at 60 pounds – were in his driveway near a tractor when the neighbor’s two pit bulls and a Chihuahua “started barking at Tony and went into attack mode.” He said he grabbed his dog by the collar and was kicking and yelling at the attacking canines.
“They took turns biting the hind legs of Tony,” he said. “I laid a couple good kicks on those vicious dogs. I even fell down, scraped my arm a little.”
He said the pit bulls “wanted to kill my dog.” He said they attacked them “all the way to the front porch” but that he and his dog made it into his house safely.
He said he immediately retrieved his 12-gauge shotgun, loaded with the same steel shot that he uses for duck hunting. He looked out the windows, he said, and the dogs were still there.
“I just came out with my gun and they were just sitting there waiting for us to come out again,” Botelho said. “And I thought, you know what, I’m not going to shoot to kill these dogs. They’re somebody’s pets. I’m not going to kill these dogs.”
Botelho said he was about 30 feet from the dogs. He said he purposely aimed a foot or two in front of the pit bulls when he fired one round at those two dogs – he said he didn’t fire at the Chihuahua – and that he struck both dogs on the ricochet, causing them to run off bleeding.
“I figured it would take a little bit off of it and sting the dogs,” he said of the ricochet. “I could’ve killed them at the range I was at.”
From there, he got in his pickup and followed the dogs to the neighbor’s home across the street, knocked on the door and had a discussion with the owner. He said he did not know the neighbors there and mentioned they were “not bad people” and a Hispanic family. He said the pit bulls’ owner understood why Botelho, whose arm was bleeding, had been upset.
“I explained, ‘Your dogs just got done attacking my dog and I was the one who shot your dogs,’” he said.
Botelho confirmed the pit bulls were injured and said “the real vicious one” had a front leg “bleeding pretty good.”
“I meant to hit them, but I didn’t mean to kill them,” he stressed.
It is unclear whether any California laws apply to Botelho’s situation, while a spokeswoman with the Monterey chapter of the ASPCA referred any questions about it to the local district attorney.
District Attorney Candice Hooper said there are laws in the food and agriculture code allowing for the harming of animals that harass livestock, but she was unsure about the pet-dog factor.
She said she would have to see the precise facts in the case to determine if there were any legal violations.
“There could be something, but I don’t know,” Hooper said. “There definitely could be civil liability.”
Hollister police Capt. David Westrick happened to be in the board chambers, because he heads up the animal control operations affected by the proposed law, when Botelho recounted his dog shooting story. Westrick said animal control is aware of Botelho’s situation and that it’s too early to get into details with potential legal repercussions.
“It would probably be turned over, if it was a crime, to the sheriff’s department,” said Westrick, who also encouraged residents to spay or neuter their pets to help curtail the number of dogs at large in the community.
