Yelm man says he shot Salma Hayek's dog after he found it fighting with his own dogs in his garage

YELM – A Yelm man told Thurston County sheriff’s deputies he shot actress Salma Hayek’s dog because it was fighting his own dogs in his garage.

Hayak, whose ranch serves as a mini animal sanctuary, posted on Instagram last week that her dog Mozart “didn’t deserve a slow and painful death.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BCQ4sG2MFi_/?taken-by=salmahayek

In a press release Monday, deputies said they got a call from a caretaker on the ranch, Kelly Littlejohn, reporting the dog’s death.

Littlejohn said she’d taken Mozart, a Belgian Malinois, and a few other dogs along on a horseback ride on Feb. 19, and that when she got back she realized he was missing.  She rode back out and found Mozart dead on the trail.

A local vet conducted a necropsy, and found that a pellet had nicked an artery, causing the dog to bleed out.

After there was an uproar from Hayak’s Instagram post, deputies talked to a neighbor who said he’d shot the dog in the rear end with a pellet gun after he found it and another dog fighting with his German Sheppards in his garage.

He said he hadn’t realized the dog died, because it ran away after he shot it.

Deputies said the case will be forwarded to the Thurston County prosecutor’s office for review.