Police1 Staff Report
(FRANKLIN TOWNSHIP, Ohio) -- The hunter told sheriff’s deputies who were investigating that he had been aiming at a deer target in the back yard.
But were problems. Shots had missed the target that was facing an Interstate.
They scored a direct hit on a family dog that was found dead. The gunman told deputies that it had been a “bad dog.”
Officers responded to an 11:03 a.m. call last Friday about a child firing a weapon to discover an armed four-year-old lugging around a rifle. Later he brought a handgun out to deputies. During this time the child’s mother was asleep.
His father came home to be met by deputies who were confiscating the marijuana plants he was allegedly growing.
Officers said that the boy had access to several loaded guns and a bow and arrows with razor-sharp tips.
“It’s a pretty bizarre deal,” John Burke, head of the county drug task, told the Dayton Daily News. “It’s very disturbing to see a young boy that age with this much familiarity with firearms.”
Parents, Thomas John Flanagan, 34, and Mesa Nicole Neuman, 27, were charged with cultivation of marijuana and drug abuse. Neuman was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia. Both parents were cited to appear in Franklin Municipal Court.
Warren County Children’s Services has custody of the child, the newspaper said.