TRAVERSE CITY -- A man who fatally shot a dog that ran onto his Whitewater Township property pleaded guilty to a criminal charge.
Jeffrey Kendall Winkel, 54, pleaded guilty Friday to a felony count of killing an animal. Prosecutors dropped an additional count of using a firearm during the course of a felony in exchange for the plea.
Winkel, who lives on Lackey Road, shot a chocolate Labrador retriever named "Maggie" on April 3.
A woman told police her two dogs wandered away while she returned to her vehicle after a walk, court records show. She heard a gunshot and a yelp, and her fiance later found one dog dead in Winkel's yard.
Winkel told a Michigan State Police trooper he shot the dog because it was harassing his chickens, according to police reports. When the trooper pointed out that the chickens were in an enclosed building, Winkel responded that the dog was harassing his horse.
The ground was snow-covered the day of the incident, and the trooper couldn't find dog prints near the chickens or within "harassing distance" of the horse, according to the report. The closest tracks were about 50 feet from the chicken coop, the trooper said.
The trooper pointed this out to Winkel, who then said the dog was chasing a deer.
Winkel told Circuit Judge Thomas G. Power he believed he had legal grounds to shoot the dog.
"I thought I was within my rights, but apparently I was not," he said.
The dog's owners and Winkel declined comment after the plea. Winkel in a May 30 letter to the Record-Eagle said he's had problems with dogs killing his chickens and believed the dogs harassed his animals in the April 3 incident.
He told the trooper the same two dogs had been on his property last summer, according to the police report. He took them home and told the owners not to let them roam his property again, he said.
Sentencing is set for August.
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