Man Killed His Neighbor After Dog Dispute and Walked Away Like ‘Nothing Happened,’ Witness Claims
March 30, 2018A Colorado man is suspected of murder after allegedly shooting his neighbor in the head following an apparent dispute over a dog earlier this week, the victim’s fiancée says.
Police in Thornton, Colorado, announced the arrest of Michael Kourosh Sadeghi, 32, of Thornton, in a tweet on Wednesday following the Tuesday night shooting. Sadeghi is suspected of first-degree murder, authorities say.
The victim is 42-year-old Dustin Schmidt, who lived with his fiancée, Vicki Branaghan, in a home that shared a backyard fence with the accused killer’s property, Branaghan’s mother tells PEOPLE.
Branaghan told The Denver Post that after Sadeghi allegedly fired on Schmidt, the suspect “turned around and walked back to his house as though nothing happened.” She was too distraught to speak with PEOPLE.
“It was so unprovoked,” Branaghan’s mother, Vicki Key, tells PEOPLE.
A police spokesman told the Denver Post that, as of Wednesday, “no motive has been established.”
“All indications are that these people — up until last night — got along,” the spokesman said. “We’re still trying to figure out why one neighbor shot another.” (Police were not available Friday to comment on Branaghan’s account of the shooting.)
Sadeghi is being held without bond in the Adams County Detention Facility, jail records show. He has not yet been formally charged, and it was unclear whether he has retained an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
He will appear in court in April.
Dustin Schmidt
Courtesy Vicki Branaghan
‘He Was Pissed Off at Dustin’
According to Key, the altercation happened around 7:45 p.m. Tuesday after her daughter’s dog, a German shepherd mix named Bruno, jumped the fence that separates the neighbors’ backyards and became hung up on a leash that threatened to choke the animal.
Bruno is “just a big old sweet dog,” says Key, but when her daughter rescued him from a shelter, “they never told my daughter that this dog does not like to stay home. So she had to start leashing him up in the yard.”
“He can still jump my daughter’s six-foot fence,” Key says. “He has done it a few times.”
When Branaghan saw the dog tangled by his leash on Sadeghi’s side of the fence, she alerted Schmidt, who hurried to lift the animal back over the fence. Afterward, Schmidt “kind of [swatted] him on the butt and was scolding him,” Key says. “You gotta let him know” to correct the dog’s behavior, she says.
Sadeghi saw this from a second-floor window in his home, according to Key. “He was looking out his bedroom window and he yelled at Dustin, ‘Did you just hit that dog?’ ” she say. “And my daughter says, ‘Yeah … he’s in trouble.’ They were disciplining him.”
“They weren’t beating him. They were just swatting,” Key says.
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Michael Kourosh Sadeghi
Thornton Police Department
After that verbal exchange, Key alleges, Sadeghi came out of his house and, as Schmidt was walking away from the fence and back toward his own house, Sadeghi “shot him point-blank in the back of the head four to six times.”
“He wasn’t aiming at my daughter,” she says. “He was pissed off at Dustin.”
As Sadeghi then walked back wordlessly toward his own home, Branaghan rushed to her fallen fiancée. “She was trying to hold him, saying ‘Please wake up, please wake up,’ ” Key recalls.
Neighbors who heard the gunshots were already calling 911 and after Branaghan raced inside to find her phone and then returned to Schmidt’s side, “she said she knew he was gone,” says her mother.
Until then there’d been no history of tension between the two neighbors, Key says. Branaghan and Sadeghi had even walked their dogs together.
“Everyone around here is shocked,” Key says.
“There was no feud between them,” a neighbor told the Denver Post of Schmidt and Sadeghi. “Nothing.”
A Love Story Cut Short
Schmidt moved into Branaghan’s home about six months ago, and the two were sprucing it up with plans to put it on the market next month and move to another shared residence, according to Key. They’d dated for more than a year and talked marriage but had not yet set a date.
“He was so sweet,” Key says of Schmidt, who worked as a warehouse manager. “He just seemed crazy about my daughter.”
The tragedy added to Branaghan’s loss two years ago of her 16-year-old son, Skyeler, who was taken off life support and died in Branaghan’s home from injuries he sustained in a car accident.
Branaghan also has a 13-year-old daughter with whom she shares custody with a former husband, Key says.
“She was finally getting happy again,” Key says. On those days when Key’s teenage granddaughter was living with Branaghan and Schmidt, Schmidt “made sure family nights, movie nights, eating out, bowling — he made sure that there was family time. He was helping my daughter. He was her rock after suffering the loss of her son.”
“Just a beautiful soul inside and out. He just seemed like a wonderful man,” she says. “We knew he was happy too. We could tell.”
Schmidt and Branaghan, both born in August, had plans to travel and celebrate their birthdays in New Orleans next summer, Key says.
“We were just getting to love him,” she says. “My daughter already loved him.”