GOLDEN — A 36-year-old man who pleaded guilty to shooting the family dog, Lucky, was sentenced Thursday to three years of probation and 45 days in jail.
Devin Shane Calhoun was charged with animal cruelty and prohibited use of a weapon last August for shooting the 5-month-old border collie after it ate steak from his plate while Calhoun was outside.
Lucky was only grazed and lived. He makes his home with Calhoun’s wife and four children. Calhoun does not live with the family.
District Court Judge Lily Oeffler also ordered Calhoun to continue with mental health treatment and taking medications; to complete 12 animal-abuse treatment sessions and 36 weeks of domestic-violence classes; and to find and hold a job.
“You were drunk with four children at home and you took a .44 revolver and shot a dog while your children were around because the dog ate off your plate,” Oeffler said.
“The dog is fine now, but I don’t know about your children,” she added.
Oeffler said what troubled her was that Calhoun was arrested in October for drunken driving. He also has a pattern of discontinuing medications for psychoaffective disorder and bipolar depression. Those actions demonstrate a lack of dealing with mental health issues, she said.
Calhoun declined to address the court, but his attorney, Bridget Klauber, said he feels “badly about his behavior.”
Klauber said Calhoun is doing “very well” on a regimen of medications and weekly treatment sessions.
Prosecutor Elly Pierson said, “He frightened his children and his wife and injured a dog. It was lucky that Lucky was not killed.”
Pierson said she was particularly concerned about Calhoun’s violence against animals, calling it “a red flag that we see before a massacre.”
Calhoun was expelled from Platte Canyon High School in Bailey two decades ago for saying he was going to kill people in the school and making a list of who would die, said Pierson, who drew a comparison with Columbine killers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris.
Klauber took exception, telling the court that comparing her client to the Columbine shooters “is very inappropriate.”
Ann Schrader: 303-278-3217 or aschrader@denverpost.com.
