By ROBERT WHALE

Staff writer

The King County Prosecutor has charged an Auburn woman with first-degree animal cruelty for allegedly shooting and killing her neighbor’s 7-month-old bull Mastiff puppy.

Denise Leahy, 46, was charged last Thursday in King County Superior Court.

Leahy is scheduled to be arraigned Aug. 20 at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent. First-degree animal cruelty is a Class C felony, carrying a sentencing range from one year to a maximum of five years in jail and a $10,000 fine.

According to court records, the owner told police she had left her two dogs in her fenced-in yard on the east side of her property in the 5500 block of 55th Street Southeast at about 10:30 that morning. When she returned at 5:30 p.m., Taz was lying front of a large gate that had been closed that morning, dead in a pool of his own blood.

According to court records, the woman’s husband drove the dog to the Sumner Veterinary Hospital where a necropsy revealed it had been shot in the left side with a low-caliber gun. No bullet was found in the dog or later in the owner’s yard.

Court records say the owner immediately had suspected Denise Leahy and her husband, who she said had previously threatened to shoot the dog. She said she called Leahy’s husband about the shooting, but he denied having anything to do with it. He said he had been sleeping and hadn’t heard or seen anything unusual.

According to court records, a neighbor told Auburn police that he had heard a loud bang earlier that day, but since he had been hearing fireworks all day from the Leahy’s property, he had assumed that is what it was.

The neighbor said at that time he saw the agitated puppy “flipping” around the fenced-in yard, and Mrs. Leahy standing in the middle of the street watching the dog. He assumed the dog had been frightened by fireworks, but watched Leahy walk toward her mailbox and then back to her property, staring at the dog.

While he later told police he was confident she was not carrying a gun, he admitted he could not see her hands.

Meanwhile, another neighbor found a .22 caliber gold shell casing in the roadway near where the dog was shot. When police interviewed Denise Leahy, she denied owning a .22 caliber rifle. But after a search warrant was issued, officers found .22 caliber ammunition in her home. They did not recover a firearm.

Leahy was arrested July 31 at her home and jailed briefly.

Leahy denied to police that she had shot the dog but conceded she might have told friends and neighbors she had done so.

According to court records, Leahy told a friend that she’d shot the puppy because it was “barking and being annoying” and because her husband “does not like noise.” Also according to those records, she told this friend she had been in her back yard shooting her .22 when she noticed the dog in the roadway “barking and being annoying.” According to court records, she said she shot once at the dog and “it acted like it had been hit and then just laid there.”