Cops: Neighbor misses dog, shoots woman
A woman who was chasing her dog was fatally shot by a neighbor after the dog ran through the neighbor’s property, police said.
Posey County Sheriff James Folz said Melinda Lindauer apparently was trying to shoot the dog, which had ventured on her property near Wadesville, about 15 miles northwest of Evansville. Instead, the bullet struck 29-year-old Nicole Stroud, who was visiting her grandmother’s home Thursday.
Stroud was pronounced dead at Deaconess Hospital in Evansville. Deputies arrested Lindauer on preliminary charges of involuntary manslaughter and reckless homicide.
I’ve never really figured out where I stand on gun control, but I do know this: You can’t put controls on stupid.
Why would she want to shoot someone’s dog? Target practice? You can’t just go shooting off weapons in your backyard!
My neighbor on one side shoots a .38 in her yard, and the one on the other side was cooking meth for years after the authorities were informed of it. Four houses up the road, the guy shoots dogs. Pretty common behavior outside the city limits in southern Indiana. I’ve called the sheriff and he says, “You live out in the country, right?…” Which is his way of saying I could always move into town where such things are less common.
Laws and common sense are for city folk.
My brother-in-law and his family lost a beagle pup in a similar situation. Their dog got out and ran on to a piece of property owned by an old guy who feeds feral rabbits. They aren’t really pets, and aren’t fenced, but the guy has a bunch of rabbits on the property and apparently considers them his own. While it’s in dispute whether the dog was actually chasing any rabbits, the old guy who owns this property (which used to be in the middle to nowhere but now is surrounded by subdivisions) shot and killed the dog. Thankfully, our 10 year old niece, who was chasing the escaped dog, respected the rule that she wasn’t supposed to cross a certain road, or she might have ended up suffering the same fate as the unfortunate woman in the story you linked. It would have been against the law in certain municipalities, but wasn’t in the unincorporated part of the county where they live.
I have had dealings with the Lindauer woman in the story that did the shooting. She is a nutcase and has often made threats to beat people up kill people etc. Hard to believe she wasn’t aiming for the victim given her twisted mindset. She is one seriously mean, evil and paranoid witch. This could just as easily happen regardless of where one lives.
Doug:
I believe Indiana has statutes that give the shooter civil immunity only if the dog is attacking or killing people or livestock. I tried a case like this once when my client shot and killed hunting dogs who were attacking his sheep. Most people erroneously believe once they are outside of a municipal no-shooting zone, they can kill dogs on their property. They could up until the mid-1980s when these laws went into effect. The dog has to be doing something dangerous. This woman’s estate should have a claim against the shooter, unless the dog was trying to attack the shooter.
I was wondering about that, Barry. I’ve been around people who talk tough about what they’ll do if they see someone else’s dog on their property. If it’s a legitimate matter of defense, that doesn’t bother me much. But, if it’s just being a crotchety neighbor getting irate about a little dog crap on the lawn, executing Fido seems beyond the pale.
I was in Evansville this past weekend, and this was front page news. If my memory serves me correctly, the kind of dog she was shooting at was not the kind of dog that would generally attack anything. This Lindauer woman sounded like she was mentally derainged.