Sheep shot
Palmer, AK (US)Incident Date: Thursday, Apr 30, 1998
County: Matanuska Susitna
Disposition: Open
Suspect(s) Unknown - We need your help!
Noelle and Dan Williams never heard the shots outside their home Sunday night. But when they went to feed their flock of 60 sheep the next morning, they found three dead. Two others were limping and a fourth, a year-old ewe named Peaches, was writhing in agony, a gunshot wound in her gut.
The shootings left the couple, who have devoted the past eight years to raising and breeding sheep, minus more than $2,000 in livestock, including a prized pure-bred Shetland named Rosalinda.
With curly brown hair and a penchant for having her head scratched Rosalinda was a personal favorite.
"She was just this little lamb who wouldn't hurt anybody," Noelle Williams said. "You could put your hand out, and she would walk up to you to be scratched. It just breaks me up."
The bullets eaily could have reached the couple's home less than 100 feet away, where they and their 4-year old son, Nicholas, were sleeping, she said.
Alaska State Troopers are investigating the shooting but have no leads. They suspect teenagers. The same night, someone shot the doors at Colony High School and blew out the windshield of a car parked on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, trooper Mike Brandenburger said.
Officers recovered .22-caliber casings from each of the scenes, he said. The Williamses also recovered a .22-caliber bullet from the carcass of one of their sheep.
Williams said that because she raises animals, she's used to injuries and deaths. But having her sheep shot is heartbreaking.
Of all the sheep the couple lost, Rosalinda's death hurts the most. She represents the culmination of five years of breeding work, and she was about to give birth, Williams said. When the couple found her, she had torn up the grass around her and had froth coming out of her mouth. "She obviously had been in pain for some time," she said.
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