Fence Ordered After Police Car Kills Dog

A man whose Rottweiler was run over and killed by a police cruiser must now install $1,000 worth of fenced, roofed backyard kennels before animal control officers will even consider returning his other four dogs to him.

“I think this is b.s.,” Hernan Udaeta, 29, said Wednesday, two days after his Rottweilers escaped from his backyard and ran amok in his neighborhood.

The dogs, now in county custody, are not vicious and live comfortably with him, his brother, his sister and her two young children, he said.

“I could definitely say, ‘Hey, keep the dogs’ if they bit anybody,” Udaeta said. “But the dogs know better than that, and none of that happened.”

But Simi Valley Police Lt. Tony Harper said the dogs were aggressive and acting dangerous. They broke loose from their yard Monday morning, jumped at a woman’s window and tore her screen, then rushed at a police officer trying to corral them.

Officer John Samarin was able to fend off the 100-pound dogs with pepper spray and get back into his cruiser, Harper said.

But when Ventura County animal control officers arrived 23 minutes later without a tranquilizer dart gun, police found it difficult to keep the dogs hemmed in with cruisers. One dog ran through a family’s house, and the others rushed at a group of pedestrians.

“The dogs were running all over the place, and [the officers] were quite concerned about safety,” Harper said. “At one point, Senior Officer Dave Livingstone decided it was time to put one of these dogs down. He hit the dog with the car, ran over the dog.

“The dog was able to get up and run away, and Officer Samarin did the same,” hitting it again and killing it with his cruiser, Harper said. “The problem is, if those dogs had bitten a child, we then would have been criticized: ‘Why didn’t you shoot the dogs?’ It’s a Catch-22 here. . . .This incident went on for around 2 1/2 hours.”

Udaeta said he must attend a Dec. 20 hearing with county animal regulation officers to recover his other pets. Of his dogs’ behavior, he said, “When I know some police officer’s after me, I’m going to run as fast as I can. They just wanted to get back into the house.”

County animal control Officer Kathy Jenks said she will hear testimony from police, Udaeta and any witnesses he wants to present before deciding the dogs’ fate.

The kennels in Udaeta’s backyard are “just a stopgap,” she said. “There’s no guarantee the dogs will be able to remain in the home once there’s been a hearing, if there’s a finding the dogs are a nuisance.”

Udaeta was told to build the kennels only because he wanted to bring the dogs home before the hearing, she said.

The dogs have been accused of unprovoked, threatening behavior; damaging real or personal property; and chasing pedestrians--any of which could have the dogs declared to be nuisances, Jenks said.

That could mean ordering Udaeta to build secure housing for the dogs or finding other homes for them--but not destroying them.