By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
The Centralia man suspected of breaking his impounded dogs out of the Lewis County Animal Shelter has been found and booked into jail.
Terry Petrich was wanted for questioning after his Pit Bull and Rottweiler which were scheduled to be euthanized vanished last week from the facility on Centralia-Alpha Road.
Someone cut a fence on the exterior portion of their kennel.
Lewis County Sheriff’s Office Chief Civil Deputy Stacy Brown said Petrich was brought in by a bail bond company around 1 o’clock this morning.
The canines got in trouble after a December 2010 attack on a neighbor’s pack of alpacas that left six animals dead and others maimed.
Petrich was issued an infraction for “prohibited activities by dogs,” according to Brown. The county then deemed the canines “dangerous dogs” putting into place numerous requirements and fees if their owner wanted to keep them.
Shelter Manager Amy Hanson said the issue was appealable, but Petrich failed to show up at two hearings. The pets, Whitney and Max, were impounded in April, she said.
The sheriff’s office on Wednesday got a tip the animals were back at Petrich’s South Schueber Road property, seized them again and questioned Petrich’s girlfriend who lives there. He wasn’t around and she said the dogs just “showed up” at their door in the night.
She was arrested and jailed for possession of stolen property and rendering criminal assistance,
Hanson said yesterday they didn’t actually bring the dogs back to the shelter but moved them to another holding facility to keep them from possibly being stolen again.
Once an animal is designated a dangerous dog by county officials, the only way they can avoid being put down is for the owner to secure $250,000 in liability insurance, keep the dogs in a six-sided pen, microchip them for identification and pay a $50 registration fee to the county, according to Hanson. Plus, Petrich would have had to pay impound fees, she said.
“We don’t want to euthanize, but there’s no other alternative,” Hanson said. “We can’t adopt them out, they’re not adoptable.”
The dogs were given something like a last special meal, according to Hanson. The woman who was holding them fed them cheeseburgers and ice cream, she said.
Hanson said they planned to put the dogs down after closing yesterday.
•••
For background, read:
• “Stolen dangerous dogs located, returned to animal shelter” from Thursday June 14, 2012, here
• “Survivors of alpaca attack “scared, ugly and sad”” from Sunday Dec. 19, 2010, here
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter
George, I didn’t differentiate between the criminal cases and all the tax leins that had to be sued for and the judgements for God knows what. To me, someone who choronically doesn’t pay bills is a lowlife too. It’s a pattern of behavior I have zero respect for. iI worked for a local collection agency for a while and can tell you that about 95% of the people I talked to just had messed up priorities and lived way beyond their means. There are a total of 57 cases under the name in Lewis, Thurston, Pierce and Cowlitz counties if you leave out the middle initial/name. Granted, there could be another Terry Petrich that lives in SW Washington, but what are the odds? I’m comfortable assuming it’s the same guy based on the behavior outlined on this website. People with no scruples are capable of anything.
“Disgusted”, I only found two criminal cases against him in the Superior Court site in Lewis County…. you know of any others?
Oh, and “karma” – what is it they say about birds of a feather? I wouldn’t be too quick to admit this guy was someone I knew well. His actions speak louder than anything you could say in his defense.
If anyone has any question about the character of the guy in question, assuming the Terry Michael Petrich found on the Washington Superior Courts website and this guy are one and the same, just take a look. The one you find on the Superior Court website is a total POS if ever there was one.
According to the animal shelter the dogs were impounded on April 19th. There have been no other attacks on the alpacas, since then.
Karma, you don’t have to trash a persons name. Some losers do it themselves by being a frequent flier of the L.C. hotel (jail) just check to online court systems to find out how “innocent” some people are…..
I don’t see how him working to support his family makes any difference in the matter of whether or not his dogs were responsible for killing a farmer’s livestock, whether or not he took proper precautions with his dogs in the first place, whether or not he took proper steps AFTER the attack in order to save his dogs, whether or not he had anything to do with breaking them out of the pound.
I don’t know him. But I do know that hard-working people, people who we think are ‘good’ family folks, drop the ball at times. I also know that even if they meet the criteria for being hard-working responsible folks in one avenue, that doesn’t mean jack about every single other aspect of their lives. As the logical statement goes, it’s suggestive but not indicative.
If he’s innocent, good luck to him, and anyone with any evidence should step forward so the police don’t waste their time and resources and our taxpayer money on pursuing him and instead find out whose dogs were responsible and go after that owner. But if you haven’t got anything beyond ‘I know him and I know he would never do anything like that’ – well, then, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to suffer through his situation, and the fact that people are going to think he’s guilty of at MINIMUM negligence in doing his duty by those poor dogs.
As for karma – what, exactly, is the karma for a dog owner who through their own negligence and uncaring lets his dogs do thousands upon thousands in livestock and property damage to his neighbors, doesn’t even attend the hearings in order to try to get his dogs back or to defend himself, and possibly tries a bit of larceny, trespassing and property damage to steal them back without bothering with due process of law? You’re quick to defend him, quick to try to call karma down on everyone who expresses the opinion that someone who does all this is not doing the right thing. I don’t usually get biblical and I try not to be inflammatory here, but honestly? Mote, beam.
Everyone has and is entitled to their own opinion. I know Terry personally and to degrade the name of an individual whom you don’t know is down right disrespectful. You are going to say what you will about him and your opinion as to what he should and/or shouldn’t have done and as I said before you are entitled to do so, but who is to say he wasn’t working his ass off to support his family. I’m done reading these comments. I do believe in karma and we will all see what happens when the truth unfolds.
“Karma”, if he wanted to do things “the right way”, he would have been showing up at the hearings to determine the status of the dogs. Did he? Nope. That’s not quite doing things “the right way” now, is it? Did he break those dogs out? Who knows…
And don’t give us that crap about “good people”, because it’s all bull. It’s about the same as Phelps being called “good”, or Booth, or any other number of demonic monsters from the local area. If he is “good” then he would have taken all the steps necessary to keep his dogs under control, and he would have fought to have his dogs returned. Instead, we’re stuck with yet another “bad dog owner”…
Who are you to say he was even the one to break into the facility? The paper says he was wanted for questioning not to be charged. Maybe he wanted to do the right thing and get them the proper way. Do not judge others until you know the facts and in this case making assumptions about good people based on what you read in the media.
Karma – if those dogs genuinely did not attack and kill all those llamas and you believe that the neighbors framed the dogs and their owner, why not tell the police so? They are obligated to investigate that, since if you are correct, the people who lied were obstructing an ongoing police investigation and wasting official time, both of which carry punitive fines, I believe, and possibly jail time.
Heck, tell Sharon – if there is any real chance that you are correct, it’s certainly newsworthy.
However, please DO be aware that there has been usually a very big difference between attacks by a coyote on a herd animal and by a pair of dogs working together. I wasn’t there, I can’t say what happened there, but the damage as reported was not done by a coyote. It would have had to be multiple coyotes or dogs working together, which is less common and very unusual if it was NOT someone’s dogs from nearby.
“Karma”, if the dogs never left the yard, then why did their owner not do what he could, legally, to save them? He had plenty of chances to do so, and not once did he come forward to even try to do the right thing. This is all on him…
Looking forward to seeing how this one ultimately plays out. Thanks for keeping us posted, Sharon!
The dogs never left the yard. They were harmless animals; because of their breed were accused. The neighbors all had it out for Terry anyhow karma is a bitch. They will get theirs for doing this to him and those harmless dogs.
So many opportunities to do the right thing and he didn’t do any of them at any point. It’s terrible. I do feel bad for those dogs, but that owner ruined any chance of them having a good life, letting them run free and not following up after they did SO much damage and killed so many animals. It’s just terrible.
Again… no bad dogs, just bad dog owners. He had all those chances to get his dogs back legally, and not once did he take those chances. Instead, he allegedly had to bust them out…. they should charge him with the same thing you would charge someone with if they broke a criminal out of the state prison….