A local family is still reeling from a March 4 home invasion that killed Cojo, their nine-month-old Great Dane.
While she wasn’t home when this break-in occurred, Robyn Shlachetka knows that her boyfriend Kevin Loder, their four-year old daughter and a family friend were forced to flee the house around 1 p.m. after a trio of young men started banging on the front door, demanding to be let in.
Even though Loder locked the door and escaped to the backyard with the other two, the assailants still managed to get in after smashing through a pane of glass next to the deadbolt.
After calling the police and making sure that his daughter was safe, Loder eventually returned to the Ash Street home to find several electronics missing and their dog Cojo bleeding under the deck from an apparent machete attack.
Shlachetka eventually met up with them at the vet, but by that time it was too late and Cojo eventually died from his wounds later that day.
“I went and sat with him and it was awful,” she told the Thompson Citizen March 21. “The vet was putting her whole hand inside of his neck trying to get him to stop bleeding. He was cut from his spine all the way down to [his neck] as well as a hack mark on his back.”
To make matters worse, Shlachetka didn’t even have a lot of time to process this incident and stay with her family, which includes another two girls and a boy, since her next 13-day shift as a medevac pilot started the very next morning.
“It was the first time I think I’ve ever hated my job,” she said. “Because I kept thinking, ‘If I’m in the air too long what if something happens?’ I’ve never felt such an urge to just be home, just to be there, just to make sure that things are OK.”
However, right before she left, Shlachetka did manage to reach out to the public in a series of Facebook posts, offering a cash reward to anyone with information that could help police track down these assailants.
Shlachetka described all three suspects as being Indigenous men in their mid-20s to early 30s, one of whom had a teardrop tattoo.
“We’ve had about six, seven names thrown around, all of which I forwarded to the RCMP,” she said.
Now that she’s back home from work, Shlachetka finally has the opportunity to reconnect with her family and deal with the emotional aftermath of this traumatic event.
Her youngest daughter, who witnessed the break-in firsthand, remains shaken by the memory.
“She came with me for a ride yesterday and she was really upset and she’s still really upset,” said Shlachetka. “I have no doubts that I’ll need to take her to counselling tohelp her deal with it. So the house has definitely been pretty tense since.”
Cojo’s death is even affecting the family’s other Great Dane named Callie, better known as “Cow Dog,” since Shlachetka said the dog doesn’t have her usual drive to escape from the yard and wander around the city.
“She’s just not the same. She’s just kind of slow. I mean, it’s been warm, she should be getting over the fence and running away.”
Returning home has also given Shlachetka time to reflect on her own memories of Cojo, who became a member of the family last August. Since then, the Great Dane quickly gained the reputation as being a gentle giant, who wasn’t above stealing food or lounging around on the couch.
“He was a huge suck,” said Shlachetka. “He didn’t want to do anything but to cuddle. He was really sneaky and smart too. I watched him for 10 minutes play with the baby gate that we used to keep him out of the kitchen and he figured out how to open it.”
Even though Cojo was finally laid to rest near her father’s trapline on March 20, Shlachetka is still unnerved by the break-in, having never encountered anything like this in the 13 years she’s been living in Thompson.
Because of this, Shlachetka is joining other concerned citizens who are bracing for an uptick in local crime that usually accompanies the beginning of the spring season.
“The hardest part about [living in] places like Thompson is there’s so many good people who support each other and animal lovers that I had no idea even existed pop up and message me their support,” she said. “But then there’s this dark underbelly of these kids that are just becoming worse and worse it seems.”
For the time being, Shlachetka is asking anyone with information about this crime to either contact her via Facebook or call the local RCMP directly at 204-677-6909.
She also mentioned that her sister-in-law set up a GoFundMe campaign to help the family pay their vet bills and raise enough money to reward anyone with information that could lead to the attackers’ arrests.
“I definitely want them prosecuted. I don’t think it’s fair for anyone to have to go through that,” said Shlachetka. “Everyone should feel secure in their own homes, but unfortunately that isn’t really the case right now.”
