Las Vegas police investigating fatal shooting of dog
The Metropolitan Police Department is investigating the shooting of a dog in the western Las Vegas on Thursday night.
Just before 9 p.m., Sophia Konstantinovnva, 37, came home from work and was greeted by Cocoa Puff, one of her two 4-year-old miniature poodles.
As she searched all over her home, located near Durango and Alta drives, for her other dog, Fuzzy Bear, she felt scared and worried, wondering if he was safe, Konstantinovnva recalled.
“Sometimes your mind plays tricks on you and you think weird things,” she said. But her gut feeling was right. As she entered her backyard in search for him, she saw the dog’s body on the ground with a large bullet hole in it, she said.
She said she was in shock and in tears after seeing him. The rain Thursday night had washed away much of the blood, but it was clear he had been shot and had been lying on the ground for a while, she said.
Konstantinovnv said she took photos and called 9-1-1, and four Metro officers came to her home to investigate.
Cocoa Puff was uninjured. Konstantinovna credits that to her speed. “She was much faster than Fuzzy Bear, she probably got scared and ran as fast as she could,” she said.
Konstantinovna said she believes her dogs were targeted, noting she was gone for only three and a half hours and the wound appeared to have been a “perfect shot.”
“Someone was waiting and ready to kill my dog right after I left the house, and they were a sharp shooter,” she said.
Konstantinovna’s dogs were house dogs, but had access to a doggy door leading to the backyard, she said.
When Konstantinovna approached neighbors about what happened, she said, no one heard gunshots, though one neighbor claimed to have heard “a lot of commotion and dogs barking” at one point while she was gone.
Contact Jessica Terrones at jt