In the six years since Barbara Watson brought two sibling miniature donkeys home to Lyons, she said the pair had never been apart. So when the male donkey, Tucker, came up to her on Dec. 21 without his sister Kaitlyn, Watson felt something wasn’t right.

“They were never more than 20 feet apart,” Watson said Thursday. “I immediately knew something was wrong.”

After searching the nine acres of pasture where the siblings grazed at her property on Rock Wedge Drive in north Lyons, Watson found Kaitlyn’s lifeless body.

Her pet donkey had suffered gunshot wounds to the jaw and chest.

According to the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office, the officer who responded to the scene that day suspected some sort of long-range, high-powered rifle was used to shoot the animal, possibly from a nearby road.

“I just felt violated,” Watson said.

In the month since the shooting, no suspects have been identified and Kaitlyn’s death is still a mystery.

John Schulz of the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office, which handled the case alongside the Larimer Humane Society, said the investigation has been suspended for now, with no evidence or leads on the shooter.

“Unless we can obtain some further information, that’s where it is,” he said.

‘I was in disbelief’

Watson said the spot where Kaitlyn was found is uphill and 50 to 75 yards from the nearest road. When the officer went down to the road, he noticed it would have been hard to see the donkey, and that there were only two vantage points from which the shots could have been fired.

The bullets were too fragmented to be recovered for evidence, and no shells or casings were found in the area. Watson told officers she occasionally had heard the sounds of people taking target practice near the area, but her husband, Tim, did not know any reason someone would want to shoot one of the couple’s animals.

“I was in disbelief,” Tim Watson said. “Who would shoot my donkey?”

Barbara Watson said she brought Kaitlyn and Tucker home when they were just 6 months old.

“I just wanted to be able to look out and see a bunch of equines out there,” she said. “They had toys, and there was a ball they would play soccer with and kick back and forth to each other. They were just beautiful little animals.”

Watson said that for days after the shooting, Tucker would simply stand over the spot where his sister was found.

“He just stood there,” she said. “He wouldn’t eat for a couple of days, and we just now have him back to eating better.”

For that reason, Watson said the breeder in Monument where she and her husband got the pair has agreed to take back Tucker so he can be around other donkeys.

“They shouldn’t be alone,” Watson said. “But right now we are not ready to go out and adopt another donkey.”

‘Sense of security gets rocked’

As for the mystery gunman, Watson doesn’t believe the person will ever be caught.

“I have no hope the shooter will be found,” she said. “You just have to learn to live with it. I just hope it never happens again.”

But Watson’s husband Tim said that, on some level, what happened will never really leave them.

“Your sense of security gets rocked,” he said. “I definitely feel like somebody took advantage of us for fun or sport. It’s not like somebody was hunting a deer or an elk for meat.”

Contact Camera Staff Writer Mitchell Byars at 303-473-1329 or byarsm@dailycamera.com.