Adairsville man arrested for starving 7 horses
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
A black horse lay dead at the bottom of the hill, its front legs scraped from a final struggle to stand.
Most of the other six horses in the Adairsville pasture had bones showing through their skin, and the feces from one contained rocks and pebbles, as if the animal had been rooting in the dirt for food.
Horses on Richard William Brown's farm near Adairsville
That was the scene authorities described after visiting the field outside the Adairsville mobile home of Richard William Brown.
A Bartow County Sheriff's Deputy accompanied a state Agriculture Department official, Courtney Farnon, to the property last week, and found the desperate conditions. The deputy arrested Brown, 48, when it became clear there was no food for the animals, according to an incident report filed Friday and obtained Wednesday.
Brown was charged with cruelty to animals, a misdemeanor, Deputy Blake Hilley wrote in the report.
Hilley's report said a veterinarian determined the horse died from starvation and that all the surviving horses were "severely" underweight. It also said agriculture
officials had been investigating the situation for a year and had issued several violations for inadequate food that Brown had ignored.
"Richard showed me where he places the hay for the horses to eat," Hilley noted. "I did not observe any hay in or around the area where Richard said it was stored."
The surviving horses were impounded and taken to the Agriculture Department for medical treatment.More Stories
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