Neighborhood Fears for Safety of Pets After Dog Is Killed With Crossbow

Residents of the Thousand Oaks neighborhood where a 9-year-old German shepherd was shot and killed with a crossbow said Thursday that they fear similar attacks on their pets.

“I’ve just been really scared for her,� one neighbor said about her 5-year-old terrier, which she has kept locked up.

The woman, who asked not to be identified, added, “You move into an area like this and you think you’re not going to have any problems. . . I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to her.�

Neighbors fear that pets in fenced yards will be vulnerable to the same hunter who used a crossbow to kill a family pet dubbed Bandi.

The dog was shot at close range with a crossbow Tuesday in the 1700 block of Misty Creek Road, Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Frank O’Hanlon said.

The arrow apparently pierced the dog’s right hind leg, and she died nine hours later in a veterinarian’s office of respiratory failure.

Bandi’s owners, Jack and Carol Storti, “told us they had no known arguments with neighbors, so we’re really at a loss,� O’Hanlon said. “Whoever it is, it’s a senseless death of an animal.�

An 18-inch arrow found in the Stortis’ fenced yard had a razor-sharp tip usually used in hunting large game animals, Detective Greg Seeba said.

“It’s stronger than a regular hunter’s arrow. It passed right through the dog,� Seeba said.

Seeba said detectives were stymied as to why someone would hunt down a domestic pet kept behind a locked fence. Coyotes roam the semi-rural area, but neighbors say it is unlikely that a pet would be mistaken for one.

“It’s hard to say what kind of motives this kind of person would have,� Seeba said. “It’s strange. . . We’ve never heard of anything like this happening before.�

If found, the person responsible for the attack faces felony prosecution on animal cruelty charges, a crime that could be punished by a prison term and up to $20,000 in fines, Seeba said.

Carol Storti, 47, said she was awakened about 3 a.m. Tuesday by Bandi’s unusually ferocious barking.

After about two minutes, however, the barks turned into yelps and whimpers, she said. Bandi left a trail of blood from a side yard to her doghouse, where the Stortis found her cringing and wounded.

“I became hysterical when I realized someone murdered my dog,� Storti said. “To have my dog murdered at the hands of a human being. . . This person’s definitely demented.�

Neighbors voiced fears about their pets.

Mike Delmont, 17, keeps his 1-year-old Samoyed in a fenced yard but said he might look for a safer spot.

Many of the pets in the neighborhood are used as guard dogs, another neighbor said. “I think everybody’s concerned,� said the woman, who also asked to remain unidentified for fear of losing her pets.

Bandi was known by neighbors as an affectionate animal who never attacked humans, another neighbor said.

Carol Storti, claiming the attack on the family pet was deliberate, said there had also been a disturbance in the neighborhood on Thanksgiving Day. When Bandi barked that morning, she said, her husband went outside to check for a burglar and saw a man fleeing.

The attack was the second known crossbow attack on an animal in the Southland recently. On Nov. 18, a 100-pound doe was shot and killed with a crossbow in front of a house at the base of the Verdugo Mountains in Burbank.

Born in December, 1981, Bandi would have turned 9 next month. As a puppy she was given as a Christmas gift to the Stortis’ daughter, Lori, then a teen-ager.

Bandi’s name was shortened from “bandit,� said Lori Storti, now 23 and working in North Hollywood as an insurance biller. In 1982, when Lori was seriously injured in a car accident, “the first thing I did was request my dog,� she said.

Lori Storti is offering a $1,000 reward for information that will lead authorities to the dog’s slayer.

“That dog’s worth a million dollars to me,� she said.