Redondo Beach Man Maintains He Didn’t Shoot Barking Dog

A Redondo Beach aircraft mechanic pleaded not guilty this week to charges that he shot a neighbor’s dog in the head to stop it from barking.

The dog, a 4-year-old Doberman mix named Christy, survived, but is now blind in her left eye.

Douglas Arthur Solomon, 48, will stand trial Oct. 13 on one count of cruelty to animals. If convicted of the misdemeanor, he could face up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

“It’s just absolutely unbelievable,” Solomon said after appearing in court Tuesday. “I have no criminal record. I’ve never been arrested. I’ve never done anything to anybody, and I’ve never complained about (that) dog.”

The shooting took place Feb. 23, sometime in the early evening, police said.

“She was extremely lucky,” said Christy’s owner, Gregory Yorke, an executive for a water-bed manufacturer. “The bullet hit the bony ridge above the eye. If it had been a quarter of an inch higher or lower, she would have been dead.”

City animal control officials say they receive about seven or eight complaints about barking dogs every month. Although most disputes are resolved through mediation services, they occasionally turn violent.

“There are a lot of problems with barking dogs driving people crazy . . . and we have had poisonings or rock throwing incidents, but actually having somebody shoot a dog is unusual,” Redondo Beach City Prosecutor John Slawson said.

Yorke owns two dogs--Christy and Ginger, also part Doberman. In the past, complaints about the dogs have been filed with animal control officials, but not by Solomon.

February’s shooting was the second violent incident involving the dogs. In the fall of 1991, someone threw a brick through Yorke’s window with a profane message about the dogs.

On Feb. 23, Yorke said, he returned home from work to find Christy’s eye swollen to the size of a Ping-Pong ball. Initially, he said, he thought she had been clubbed with a baseball bat. But an X-ray showed she had been shot and that the bullet had lodged in her neck.

The next morning, Yorke found a shell casing in his back yard, which detectives later said had come from a .25-caliber handgun. He also discovered an impression of a footprint in the mud near the back end of his property.

A neighbor told Yorke that Solomon, who lives on the street behind him and whose property is about 100 yards away, owns a .25-caliber gun--a fact detectives later verified by checking state gun registration records.

Detectives interviewed Solomon before serving him with a search warrant. They discovered a safe in his home containing several guns but not a .25-caliber handgun. Solomon told detectives his handgun had been stolen about a year earlier while he was on a diving trip.

Detectives confiscated the other guns, as well as two pairs of athletic shoes, including the shoes he was wearing during their interview with him. Laboratory tests showed that the footprint found in the mud was similar in size and shape to one of Solomon’s shoes.

Solomon contends he has a longstanding dispute with the neighbor who told Yorke about his .25-caliber gun and that she gave Yorke his name “because she hates me.” He also believes that detectives would not have questioned him if Yorke had not faxed a letter of complaint to Police Chief Roger Moulton about delays in the investigation.

“Apparently, this guy is pretty swift with a fax machine,” Solomon said of Yorke. “Because of . . . this guy with his super, super fax machine, somebody is going to have to take the fall for this. I guess if I had a fax machine, I would get off.”

Detectives, however, deny that Yorke’s letter had any bearing on the case or their investigation of Solomon.

“I don’t think it was important at all,” said Mark Sturgeon, the detective who investigated the case. “I don’t even recall getting a call from the chief about it. We were tied up on a murder investigation soon after the dog was shot, so this case sat on the back burner for awhile.”