CAMDEN COUNTY, N.C. (WAVY) — A Camden County, North Carolina family is mourning the loss of their dog after it was shot and killed. Doorbell video caught the shooting and now their neighbor faces charges.
“I was at work in my office and I received a hysterical phone call from my daughter saying that my neighbor had shot my dog, Riker,” Natalie McFadden said of the March 26 incident.
The neighbor, Mark Thompson, told police the dog was attacking his wife and that it was she who shot the dog.
But the doorbell camera on McFadden’s house tells a different story.
In it, you see Riker coming onto the neighbor’s property and seemingly barking at their front porch. Their neighbor came out of the garage with a pistol and fired several shots at the dog. After the first shot, Riker heads back to his yard, but after the fourth shot, he is seen going down and begins screaming in pain.
Surveillance also picked up the immediate aftermath, when Thompson talked to Natalie’s daughter, Autumn, who was home alone at the time. In that video, he can be heard saying the dog was coming after his wife and that she was the one who shot him.
“He was a really sweet dog,” McFadden said. “He went camping with us, he went to the beach, he loved the beach. He would play with other dogs.”
McFadden showed the video to police, who arrested Thompson and his wife, Tonia. Mark Thompson’s charges included possession of a firearm by a felon due to a 20-year-old drug charge from New York. 10 On Your Side called and asked him about the day of the shooting.
He told us the dog had bitten the cable guy and had even gotten inside his house and chased his wife around several times. He told us “I have witnesses, a signed statement saying these dogs are over here and they are mean.”
When 10 On Your Side asked for copies of those statements, Thompson refused to make them available.
When asked how many times the dog had bitten him, Thompson accused the reporter of turning this around on him. He said he has a six-year-old granddaughter and said he’s “literally thrown her in the car because the dogs were coming over.”
McFadden said she’s never gotten complaints or seen proof that Riker had bitten anyone. Now, she said her daughter is suffering from anxiety stemming from that day.
“There are some things I feel really uncomfortable doing because I have anxiety with it now,” Autumn said. “I can’t let the dogs outside anymore because I’m scared the neighbor’s going to do something to them again. I don’t like going over to the area where he was killed because it reminds me of him.”
Said Natalie McFadden: “I want justice for Riker. I don’t think that this man should just be able to get by and not pay any consequences for taking his life unjustly like that. It was clear animal cruelty and my dog didn’t deserve to die that way.”
McFadden believes Thompson should serve more time behind bars than just a few hours. Thompson and his wife were arrested March 26 and bonded out the same day. Mark Thompson has a disposition hearing May 17.