A Boston Bar man who killed his neighbour’s dog in 2022 was found guilty on Dec. 18 in Chilliwack provincial court of obstructing a peace officer.
Court records show that Behrouz Rahmani Far was charged with uttering threats and obstructing a peace officer on Aug. 5, 2024. He was found guilty of the obstruction charge and has been sentenced to one year of probation. The other charge was stayed.
No details were available about the incident that led to the charges.
Rahmani Far was previously found guilty on Sept. 27, 2024 of shooting and killing his neighbour’s chihuahua, Bear, without a lawful purpose on March 3, 2022.
According to court documents, Rahmani Far, who owned and had 60 chickens on his property at the time, initially claimed that he shot the chihuahua for killing one of his birds.
He said he believed that the Livestock Act provided him with the authority to kill a dog if it was directly threatening his chickens. He claimed an RCMP officer told him about it but he did not consult a lawyer on how, or if, it applied to him.
Bear was one of four dogs (two chihuahuas and two large Burmese mountain dogs crossed with wolves) owned by Rahmani Far’s neighbour, Glenn Kurack. At the time of the trial, Kurack was bound by a court-ordered condition not to have direct, or indirect, contact with Rahmani Far due to an assault conviction.
During the trial, both Rahmani Far and Kurack revealed that they had not gotten along over the past five years due to a number of grievances with each other. Each man had “made multiple calls of complaint to the RCMP, resulting in many RCMP attendances to investigate or keep the peace.”
Rahmani Far said one of Kurack’s dogs had come onto his property at least five times and, on at least 14 occasions, he found Kurack’s dogs wandering the streets. He also believed the dogs had killed chickens on his property, though admitted he had not seen them do so.
An RCMP officer called and informed Kurack on March 20, 2021 that one of his chihuahuas had entered Rahmani Far’s property and killed one of his chickens.
In that same phone call, the officer told Kurack that the dog might have to be shot, as both Rahmani Far and the officer feared for their safety at the time. Kurack said he did not take the call seriously but agreed he would pay for the chicken. He said he did not see any evidence that Bear had attacked or killed any chickens.
Kurack said Rahmani Far had threatened him and his dogs numerous times. He had threatened to shoot Kurack’s dogs, shot at them with a pellet gun, and threatened to hit both Kurack and his dogs with a shovel.
Rahmani Far, who revealed he’d suffered two strokes and was unable to work because of it, said he made more than 40 complaints to the RCMP about Kurack and his dogs.
In response to the 2021 incident, Kurack rebuilt his fence to ensure his dogs wouldn’t escape his property. This worked until the 2022 incident when a hole was found in the fence.
Kurack believes it was caused by a dog other than his own chewing on it. It is believed that Bear entered Rahmani Far’s property through this hole.
Though Rahmani Far first said he shot Bear after he realized the dog had killed his chicken, he later admitted during cross-examination that a chicken had not been killed on March 3 but Bear did have yellow feathers in his mouth.
Rahmani Far also initially said he shot two warning shots to try to scare Bear away before shooting the chihuahua. During cross-examination, however, he said Bear was not close to the chickens when he shot him and that he had simply missed the first two shots due to his hands shaking.
When asked why he shot Bear, even though the dog was trying to get back onto Kurack’s property, Rahmani Far said he “did not want the dog to escape, and that he wanted to end his problems,” the court documents state.
Presiding Judge Peter D. Whyte said, due to the inconsistencies found during the cross-examination, he found no evidence to justify Rahmani Far’s claims of defence of property or colour of right.
Instead, Whyte concluded that Rahmani Far “was angry at his neighbour, and frustrated by his perception that the RCMP were unable or unwilling to fix the dog problem.”
“He had simply had enough, and determined that he would resolve the matter by taking it into his own hands,” the judge said.