PORT TOWNSEND – A Jefferson County District Court jury found a Port Hadlock man guilty of second-degree unlawful hunting of big game on Tuesday for slaying a deer with a hunting arrow within the city limit more than two years ago.
Andrew D. Shoop, 35, will be sentenced in District Court at 2 p.m. Jan. 9.
The four-point buck was found dead in the backyard of a Port Townsend residence near Chetzemoka Park on Nov. 15, 2005.
A carbon arrow was lodged in its hindquarter. It had broken the deer’s femur and penetrated into the deer’s intestines.
Shoop’s defense attorney, James A. Doros, told the jury in his closing argument that if they needed to, they should deliberate until New Year’s Eve, to make sure they made the right decision.
The foreman of the six-person, all-woman jury, which deliberated for two hours before its unanimous decision, said on Tuesday that she recalled the publicity the illegal killing received.
The death was publicized on the front page of the Port Townsend Leader weekly newspaper.
“I remember looking at the picture and saying, ‘What sick bastard would do that?'” foreman and Port Townsend resident Emily Ingram said in an interview after delivering the guilty verdict.
A clipping of the same news story was found inside Shoop’s residence during a search warrant on Dec. 13, 2005.
Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Ted DeBray told the jury in his closing argument that the news clipping found at Shoop’s house meant he was following the case to see how the investigation was developing and if authorities were close to catching him.
“Why would that newspaper clipping be in the defendant’s house?” DeBray posed to the jurors, and then answered for them:
“It’s really consistent with one thing, which is really his guilt.”
Ingram said the jury didn’t think the Leader news article was as vital to the verdict as DeBray did.
“We were divided on the newspaper clipping,” she said.
