Over 300 animals seized from shelter, some dead
Columbia, KY (US)Incident Date: Friday, Feb 20, 2009
County: Adair
Charges: Misdemeanor
Disposition: Convicted
Case Images: 1 files available
Defendant/Suspect: David Floyd Howery
Case Updates: 3 update(s) available
More than 300 animals �" including dogs, cats, chickens and goats �" have been rescued from an Adair County organization where the bodies of dead animals were found with live ones and feces and urine contaminated the rooms.
David Floyd Howery, the owner of Clean Slate Animal Rescue in Columbia, has been charged with 195 counts second-degree animal cruelty.
"It's the worst thing I've ever seen in the way of animals and the conditions that they were living in and the health that a lot of them are in," said Chief Deputy Bruce McCloud of the Adair County sheriff's office.
Clean Slate, whose mission is to provide a temporary home until animals can be placed in a permanent one, was raided Friday after the sheriff's office received a call about the conditions at the rescue agency, McCloud said.
The sheriff's office seized about 210 dogs, 30 cats, 50 chickens, 12 goats, three potbellied pigs, three chinchillas, two donkeys and a horse at Clean Slate.
Six dead goats were found in a room with the 12 live goats, McCloud said.
Howery, 50, is being held on a $1,500 full cash bond at the Adair County Regional Jail. He is scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Adair District Court.
Additional counts of animal cruelty will be added and the total will probably exceed 300, McCloud said.
Howery and his elderly father were living in the building with the animals and the animal carcasses, he said.
The sheriff's office called in the Environmental Protection Agency, the health department, the social services department and a hazardous-materials team for assistance, McCloud said.
The original 195 counts against Howery do not include charges for the dead animals or the chickens, goats, pigs, chinchillas or donkeys, McCloud said. The number of animals already dead hasn't been determined.
The animals are being housed at three locations for the time being, McCloud said.
A local farm has taken in the goats and chickens. A rescue agency has taken in the horse and donkeys.
All of the dogs and cats have been taken to the Green River Animal Shelter in Columbia.
The condition of the animals ranges from fair to very poor, said Jeff Thomas, director of the Green River Animal Shelter. "Nothing was extremely healthy. A lot of them have respiratory problems, skin conditions and are underweight."
Shelter officials are assessing the conditions of the animals, feeding them and trying to clean them.
When Green River personnel opened the shelter Saturday morning, they discovered that two animals taken from Clean Slate had died overnight, Thomas said.
Clean Slate gives rescue groups a bad name, Thomas said. "Most rescue groups are aboveboard. They pay you an in-home visit before you can adopt an animal. This fellow didn't do that."
The Green River shelter is under a court order not to euthanize or adopt out any of the animals until Howery is arraigned Monday, Thomas said.
Clean Slate was originally in Estacada, Ore. The rescue agency moved to Kentucky in March 2007 after it purchased the former Sparksville Elementary School building at 44 Weed-Sparksville Road.
Clean Slate took in animals from shelters all across the state, Thomas said. Three of the animals found at Clean Slate were from Green River, he said.
Shelters where animals had been housed are sending personnel to Green River to help and to identify any of the animals that had come from those shelters, Thomas said.
The 75 animals that already were being housed at Green River have been taken in by the Warren County Animal Shelter, Thomas said.
How to help
The Green River Animal Shelter is caring for 240 dogs and cats seized from Clean Slate Animal Rescue in Columbia. The shelter is well-supplied; the biggest need is manpower to keep the shelter clean. It is accepting supplies, cash donations and volunteers. For information, call (270) 385-9655. Supplies and donations can be dropped off at the shelter at 455 Jim Blair Road in Columbia.
Case UpdatesAn Adair county man pleads guilty to nearly 300 counts of second degree animal cruelty.
David Howery, the former owner of the Clean Slate Animal Rescue in Columbia, was sentenced to 60 days in jail.
Clean Slate was a center set up to give rescued animals a temporary home.
To avoid a longer ten-month jail term, Howery must agree to not break any more laws, withhold from owning any more animals, and pay a $2,000 fine, and other restitution costs.
Sheriff's deputies raided the shelter in February, and found dead animals next to live ones, and feces and urine contaminating the rooms. | Source: WBKO - April 17, 2009
Update posted on Apr 19, 2009 - 11:51PM |
The cats and dogs rescued from Clean Slate Animal Rescue have been completely relocated from the Green River Animal Shelter to a temporary shelter in Bowling Green.
The remaining 96 of the 240 dogs and 31 cats that were rescued from the Clean Slate Animal Rescue center in Sparksville on Feb. 20th are now under the care of The Humane Society of the United States in a temporary shelter in Bowling Green.
The National Disaster Animal Response Team of the HSUS arrived yesterday with a fully equipped kennel tractor-trailer to transport the animals to the temporary shelter located at the fairgrounds in Bowling Green.
The Bowling Green-Warren County Humane Society had already taken several of the animals last week and was waiting on the NDART to finish work at a puppy mill in North Carolina as well as a flood evacuation in Washington.
Senior Director of the HSUS Scotlund Haisley stated, "The NDART was established to assist in emergency situations like this as well as natural disasters to ensure the safety and welfare of the animals."
After the animals arrive at the temporary shelter they will be treated for their current health issues including mange and respiratory disease, at which time they will be sent to shelters for adoption.
According to Haisley, in addition to the HSUS workers and the Kentucky Humane Society, dozens of volunteers came from as far away as California to help with the rescue of the Clean Slate animals.
"Rescues like this and puppy mills are two of the biggest problems we face," said Haisley.
Clean Slate owner 50-year old David Howery was arrested and charged with 295 counts of animal cruelty and was released on a $1,500 cash bond after plead not guilty to the charges in district court on Monday, Feb. 24th and agreed to release the animals to the Green River Animal Shelter.
According to HSUS State Director for Kentucky Pam Rogers the case involving Clean Slate was a classic case of animal hoarding.
"The two biggest problems with animal cruelty we face in the state as well as national are hoarders and puppy mills and from what I have been told about the situation at Clean Slate, he was a classic hoarder," said Rogers.
According to the HSUS fact sheet on animal hoarding, an animal hoarder is a person who amasses more animals than they can properly care for and fail to recognize or refuse to aknowledge when the animals become victims of gross neglect.
In most cases after the animals are removed, the burden of caring for the animals while they are in the shelters will fall back on taxpayers.
"Local government must enact local legislation that addresses some of the issues that deal with hoarders and puppy mills to more effectively address the problem and save the taxpayers money," commented Rogers.
According to Rogers in many cases the person arrested for animal cruelty does not release control of the animals and there is not much that can be done to help prevent these types of events from happening.
Rogers noted that there is currently legislation at the state level that is awaiting approval to help combat animal hoarding in the state of Kentucky.
House Bill 428 in the Kentucky Legislature addresses the issue of the bonding of animals by specifying the responsibility for care of the animals that are seized in a case of animal cruelty.
The bill will allow judges to impose a cash bond for the care of the animals in addition to a criminal bond, which will force the offender to assume the financial responsibility for the seized animals while they are in the care of the shelters.
However if the owner of the seized animals releases control of the animals they will not be responsible for the cost incurred while under the care of the shelter.
House Bill 137 establishes shelter and shade requirements for animals by limiting the amount of animals and how they are boarded.
Both H.B. 428 and 137 will establish licensing, inspection and strict regulation of both private and public shelters.
To help prevent the amount of cases animal hoarding Rogers stated, "People need to be careful about where they send animals and if they have not been to the facility recently to check the conditions they do not need to send their animals there." Photo:Chris Broughton (left) of the HSUS National Disaster Animal Response Team along with Bowling Green Humane Society volunteer Hannah Pepin and HSUS driver Richard Danner place a dog siezed from the Clean Slate rescue into one of the mobile kennel cages to be transported to a temporary shelter in Bowling Green. | Source: Adair Progress - March 3, 2009
Update posted on Mar 3, 2009 - 10:52AM |
An Adair County man who was operating an animal rescue center at the old Sparksville Grade Center building was arrested and charged with 195 counts of cruelty to animals Friday after the Adair County Sheriff's Office executed a search warrant on the premises and found several dead animals and hundreds more living in deplorable conditions.
David Howery, age 50, was arrested by Deputy Sheriff Bruce McCloud and charged with 195 counts of second degree cruelty to animals. At his appearance in Adair District Court Monday, Howery was charged with an additional 100 counts of second degree cruelty to animals.
Howery was operating Clean Slate Animal Rescue in the old school building. According to the operation's web site, Howery had previously operated an animal rescue operation in Oregon before buying the school on e-bay and moving here in March of last year.
According to several sources, Howery would take in dogs, cats and other animals from animal shelters and/or individuals, then find homes for them in other states. However, some point in time, things got out of control.
According to Sheriff Ralph Curry, he received a phone call from an individual from out of state Friday morning informing him that he should check out the place. Curry said that he then contacted Deputy McCloud, who was in the Breeding area, and told him to go to the old school and see what he could find out about what was going on.
Deputy McCloud said that when he arrived at the location, Howery would not let him inside the building, but did give him permission to walk around and look in the windows.
"I looked in one room and saw several dead goats and some more live ones," McCloud said in an interview. "I looked in other rooms and saw large numbers of dogs and cats living in very bad conditions."
Deputy McCloud contacted Sheriff Curry, and Curry said that he told McCloud to stay there with Howery while he obtained a search warrant. The sheriff also contacted the Region 12 HazMat - Adair County Division team and requested them to come and assist in the search of the building.
After arriving on the scene and executing the search warrant, the officers waited until the Haz-Mat team arrived.
Two members of the team - Adair County Emergency Management Director Greg Thomas and Breeding Area VFD member Jerry Elliott - along with Deputy McCloud, donned haz-mat suits with self-contained breathing apparatus and entered the building.
"It's almost impossible to describe how bad things were inside," McCloud said. "There was animal feces and urine piled all over the floors, dirty hay, garbage, empty food bags, and animal carcasses laying around."
After the building tour was completed, Sheriff Curry ordered all of the animals removed. Adair County Dog Warden Jimmy Harmon brought a large trailer, and with the help of several volunteers, loaded all of the dogs and cats and took them to the Green River Animal Shelter.
Deputy McCloud said that the other farm animals were taken to various locations in the county.
A final inventory of the animals removed from the location showed 240 dogs, 31 cats, 53 chickens, 13 goats, three sheep, three potbellied pigs, seven ducks, three chinchillas, one horse, two donkeys and a large bird thought to be a parrot.
In a brief interview at the scene before he was taken to jail, Howery said that things had gotten out of hand over the past few weeks after some people who had been helping him left. He also stated that the number animals he had been taking in had increased significantly over the past few months as people, feeling the pinch of the bad economic conditions, would drop off their pets or abandon them."
Several people who knew Howery said he loved animals, but he became overwhelmed in recent months.
Sheriff Curry said that while Howery's intentions may have been good, there is no way animals should be subject to living in such conditions.
"He might have started out doing things right, but there's nothing right about the situation here today," he stated.
In addition to the sheriff's department and Adair Search and Rescue's Haz-Mat team, Social Services, the Adair County Health Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, Adair County Dog Warden and numerous other people assisted at the scene. The sheriff's department would like to thank all the volunteers for their help.
Sheriff Curry said that he has turned the matter of the building and all of its contents over the EPA, which will monitor the clean up of the facility | Source: Adair Progress - Feb 24, 2009
Update posted on Mar 3, 2009 - 10:41AM |
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