Jury awards hefty damages in Ochocos sheep dog killings

More than two years ago, two brothers, one a retired OSP trooper, pleaded no contest to animal abuse charges for fatally shooting three sheep guard dogs in the Ochoco National Forest. Now, a jury in Prineville has awarded nearly $250,000 in damages to the owner of the Great Pyrenees killed that day back in August of 2012.

A Crook County jury awarded the damages to rancher Gordon Clark earlier this week after a week-long trial.

“It really upset me and it saddened me,” Clark said Thursday of the shooting of his dogs. “It’s almost like someone comes into your yard and starts shooting.”

Clark said he is very close to his dogs and he still gets emotional when he looks at the photos of his dogs that were killed.

“First time I saw (the picture), I almost cried,” Clark said.

Paul Johnson of Roseburg and retired trooper Craig Johnson of Bend pleaded no contest to the charges back in 2013, and a Crook County judge handed down a sentence of two years probation for first-degree animal abuse, as well as a year-long ban from hunting, $500 in fines, 80 hours community service and forfeit of a firearm.

Craig Johnson defended the brothers’ actions at the time, saying they saw no sign of sheep where they were hunting. He said they thought wild dogs were chasing elk and acting viciously toward the two men.

“One dog immediately started growling and barking at me,” Craig Johnson said in 2013 in court.

Clark said Thursday his dogs are harmless.

“If they walked up to them, they could have just petted them,” Clark said.

The jury ruled in Clark’s favor for not only the $7,500 replacement value for the dogs, but $100,000 in non-economic damages for Clark’s emotional harm and $139,500 in punitive damages, said his attorney Greg Lynch.

“The verdict is significant in that there are very few jury verdicts around the country that have given a plaintiff more than the value of the animal in situations like this,” Lynch told NewsChannel 21 by email.

Clark said he plans to donate the money to the Spay Neuter Investment Project, which provides low-and no-cost spay/neuter and other veterinary services to Crook County residents.

Clark said he feels some closure, now that the trial is over, but it won’t bring back his dogs.

“I wish it never happened,” Clark said. “It’ll never be the same up there again for me.”