BILLINGS— A car ran over a dog after a fence was allegedly kicked into, creating a hole big enough for the dog to escape its backyard.
The fence damage resembles a TikTok trend called “The Kool-Aid Man Challenge”, which mimics the way the Kool-Aid mascot would run into walls.
Watch to see fence damage:
“I have looked it up online and it looks like it's a trend with high school kids,” said Steven Frankfurt, the property owner.
Frankfurt was out of town while his sister stayed at his house watching his dogs and her dog, Snoopy.
When she let the dogs out on Wednesday morning, she discovered they had escaped through a hole that had not been there the day before.
Snoopy ran into the road and was killed when a car ran over him.
Frankfurt believes the hole was a product of vandalism.
“It's not the wind doing it. It's not your pets doing it, running up on the fence like they're coming into the yard. It's an outside force pushing inward,” he said.
Frankfurt’s dog, Bella, was also in the backyard with Snoopy and ran out. She survived, but still sustained a leg injury.
“It just makes a guy mad. I'm like, why is someone going around destroying these properties? And then, yeah, you're killing their pets,” Frankfurt said.
This is the second time his fence has been vandalized, and his neighbors’ fences have been damaged as well.
“They've done it to several fences all along this block. I've seen it. I've seen it up and down the street,” he said.
Danny Wyrwas, owner of Absolute Fence in Billings, said it’s common for vinyl fences to sustain damage from vandalism.
“The big thing that we see is, especially school areas where kids are walking home, you'll see them punch fences or kick fences or do whatever, trying to break them out,” Wyrwas said.
The fence repairs cost Frankfurt $250, but Wyrwas said the price is usually much higher, especially if the fencing company must order the material from a different location.
“We love to help customers when we can, but there's a lot of running around to do when it's not our product to try to figure it out. So, we have minimums. We charge $650 minimum to go do small repairs like that,” Wyrwas said.
Frankfurt hopes the death of a dog will be a wake-up call to those causing the damage.
“I'm not even so much mad about the fence so much as I am that you killed their pet by doing this,” he said.
