Pet-Abuse.Com - Animal Abuse Case Details: 129 dogs neglected

129 dogs neglected
Mulberry, FL (US)

Incident Date: Thursday, Jan 26, 2006
County: Polk
Local Map: available
Disposition: Convicted
Case Images: 5 files available

Abuser/Suspect: Hewitt Alfonze Grant, II

Case Updates: 6 update(s) available

Case ID: 7100

Classification: Neglect / Abandonment

Animal: dog (pit-bull)

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Polk County Sheriff's Agricultural Crimes and Animal Control officers are conducting an investigation in Mulberry in reference to dog fighting.

Hewitt Grant, DOB 4/5/67, of 2335 Pump Road in Mulberry has been placed under arrest and so far charged with 1 felony county of Maintaining and Owning Equipment and Dogs for Baiting or Fighting, and 10 counts of misdemeanor Animal Cruelty, after investigation revealed he is using "cat mills" on his property to train dogs to be aggressive.

So far 2 cat mills and 2 cages with the remnants of small animals (one may be a possum, the other is unknown) have been found on the property, and so far 129 dogs have been found, including 17 puppies who appear to be younger than 3 months.

There are at least 10 dogs with scarring and wounds consistent with fighting, pit bull breed. Most of the dogs are pit bull type dogs, but there are other breeds as well. PSCO is serving a search warrant on the property tonight, as well as taking an inventory and photographs of all of the animals.

An on-scene vet is determining which, if any, of the animals are emaciated and/or sick to the point where they need to be taken away tonight for treatment. A deputy sheriff will remain posted on the property tonight until daylight tomorrow, and detectives can continue the investigation.

A cat mill is a contraption where a live animal (such as a cat, possum, raccoon) is placed in a cage just out of reach of a dog that is chained. The dog strains to catch the caged animal.

The purpose of the cat mill is to teach the dog how to be aggressive. Grant is being booked in tonight. As soon as his mug shot is available it will be sent out via media alert and on the website www.polksheriff.org under Breaking News.

Case Updates

Hewitt A. Grant II, convicted of 80 counts of animal cruelty, will serve time in Polk County Animal Control.

A judge on Jan 25 sentenced the former pit bull owner to 364 days in jail, 5 years of probation and 500 hours of community service at the animal shelter that cared for his abused dogs. Grant's case was profiled in last year's Floridian story "Kennel Trash."

A year ago today, officers from Polk County Animal Control and the Sheriff's Office raided Grant's property in Mulberry. At the sentencing Thursday, officer Mary Kirkland described that scene to the judge: "An ocean of frail bodies covered the property. Pitiful little eyes gazed on with curiosity at the activity surrounding them."

She described heavy chains, battle scars, and puppies that ate "like piranhas" when the officers fed them. Many of Grant's dogs were sick and starving and had to be euthanized immediately.

The jury that found him guilty of the 80 misdemeanors this month acquitted Grant on 43 felony cruelty charges and on a charge of owning equipment for baiting or fighting.

All of his pit bulls, deemed unsuitable for adoption because of their breed and ownership history, were eventually euthanized at animal control.

Source: St. Petersburg Times - Jan 26, 2007
Update posted on Jan 26, 2007 - 3:22PM

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A Bartow man who claimed he was only doing what he thought was best for his dogs has been found guilty of numerous counts of animal abuse.

Hewitt Grant was found guilty Tuesday of 80 counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty. The jury, which deliberated for about five hours, acquitted Grant on the other 43 counts of felony animal cruelty.

Grant, 39, said he raised his pit bulls to be hunting dogs and he liked them lean so they could chase game. Many of the dogs were in such poor shape when deputies found them on Grant's property on Jan. 26, 2005, that they had to be euthanized, according to the Polk County Sheriff's Office.

Grant, however, said he fed his dogs six days a week - every day but Sunday. He said he filled their water bowls on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He insisted the dogs did not knock over their water bowls and the water lasted them all week .

Deputies seized 139 dogs from Grant's property, most of them pit bulls. The sheriff's office also said all of the pit bulls were put down due to being in poor health or being too aggressive.

Grant will be sentenced later this month.

Source: Bay News 9 - Jan 10,, 2007
Update posted on Jan 10, 2007 - 11:18PM

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"Disrepair, filth, emaciation. That's what this case is going to be about," prosecutor Autumn Burgess told a jury today in the trial of Hewitt Grant, charged with animal cruelty after more than 100 pit bulls were seized from his Mulberry-area home.

Burgess described to the jury how scores of scarred, emaciated dogs were found on Hewitt Grant�s property, with no dog food on the premises. Some of the dogs were in such poor shape that they had to be euthanized the same day they were discovered, she told jurors.

The sheriff�s office went to Grant�s house on 2355 Pump Road on Jan. 26, 2005, to do a welfare check on some animals there. They ended up removing 139 dogs from the property, the majority of which were pit bulls, and Grant was charged with 43 counts of felony cruelty to a dog, 80 counts of misdemeanor cruelty a dog, and 1 count of possessing equipment for fighting or baiting.

That was in relation to two �cat mills� found on the property, one of which had an animal carcass in it, Burgess said. A cat mill is a device used to encourage dogs to chase a cat or other animal, to make the dog more aggressive.

Grant told deputies that the mills belonged to his father, who owned the property before him and ran a pit bull fighting operation, and used the mills to train his dogs. He claimed he never used the mills, Burgess said.

However, there were new, unrusted parts on the mill that had a carcass in it, and a worn-down area around that mill, Burgess told the jury.

All of the pit bulls taken from Grant, including the puppies, ended up having to be destroyed because they were dangerously aggressive or in extremely poor physical health according to the sheriff�s office. There were some dogs that were not pit bulls, including a beagle, a chihuahua, a Jack Russell terrier, a Belgian Malanois, a Rottweiler, and two Shiba Inus, that were put up for adoption.

Burgess� attorney, Julia Williamson, told the jury that most of the dogs were not in as bad a condition as the prosecutors claimed. �Some of those dogs were not in good shape, and they should have been euthanized, but Mr. Grant loved those dogs,� she said.

She denied that Grant ever used his dogs for fighting.

�Mr. Grant is just a simple man,� she told jurors. He grew up in Polk County and inherited some land and the mobile home on it from his father. At the time of his arrest he was working at a freezer plant, loading freezer parts onto trucks; before that, she told the jury, he owned a record store and worked as a DJ known as �DJ Nasty.�
It was while he worked at the record store that he started selling pit bulls. �He was catering to the black community, to the rap community,� and many people in the rap community like pit bulls, she told the jurors.

After he started selling them, he began breeding them, and sometimes took his dogs to dog shows, she said.

Over time, he became overwhelmed because he was also dealing with family issues, including a mother with cancer, she told the jury.

�The dogs were in bad shape because they weren�t getting enough attention, because of other things going on in his life,� she said. �He was doing his best, and he kind of got overloaded because he didn�t pay attention to how many dogs he had.�

One of the pictures that the jury was going to see, she said, was of a dog that had open wounds. Those were caused after he got too close to another dog and got in a fight, and then kept digging in the dirt around where he was chained, so his wounds never closed, she said.

Williamson told the jury that Grant never used the cat mills, and the one that the State Attorney�s office claimed that he was using had weeds growing around it, which showed it hadn�t been used in �a few months, possibly a few years�.

Deputy Paul Wright, who was one of the first two deputies to arrive on Grant�s property last January, told the jury that after Grant came to talk to deputies at his house, Grant admitted that he didn�t have any dog food on the property that day, but said he planned to buy food the next day.

He said that when he asked Grant why the dogs were so thin, Grant told him the dogs had a nervous habit of chewing on their kennels, and that was why there were thin.

Wright also testified that the majority of the dogs had extensive scarring on their heads, necks, chests, and legs.

Testimony is expected to continue Thursday in Judge Karla Wright�s courtroom.

Source: The Ledger - Jan 3, 2007
Update posted on Jan 4, 2007 - 12:07AM

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On April 5, 2006, after a half day final civil trial, Polk County County Court Judge Selph awarded all the animals in the above referenced case to the custody and care of the Polk County Sheriff's Office and entered a permanent injunction to prevent Hewitt Grant from possessing any animals in the future.

The Judge also awarded over $3800 in costs of care for the animals to be paid within 90 days. This was the civil case and David S. Bergdoll of the Polk County Sheriff's Office was the attorney assigned to handle it.

The criminal case is pending and will be coming to trial soon, with Assistant State Attorney Autumn Burgess is handling that case.

Source: Polk County Sheriff's Office
Update posted on Apr 10, 2006 - 8:54AM

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Polk County Animal Control workers have euthanized 43 of the 139 dogs seized last week after a Mulberry man was charged with breeding the animals to fight, the Sheriff's Office said. Hewitt Grant has been charged with 19 counts of felony animal cruelty and more than 50 misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty. Grant posted $47,000 bail and was released Saturday, according to jail records.

Source: The Ledger - Jan 28, 2006
Update posted on Feb 3, 2006 - 9:54AM

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Sheriff's deputies found 136 malnourished dogs on the property of a Mulberry man, along with evidence that the dogs had been abused and trained to fight. What deputies did not find anywhere on the property was a single morsel of dog food, Polk County Sheriff's Capt. Dennis Russell said. Many of the dogs, which were confined in cages or chained to stakes, did not have water available to them either. An initial check of the dogs found 13 in such bad shape that they will be euthanized and that most of the dogs were pit bulls, sheriff's officials said.

A veterinarian was on the property night checking the animals one by one, and more charges could be filed, sheriff's spokeswoman Carrie Rodgers said. Two cat mills with the remains of small animals were found on the property, deputies said. The dogs were kept far back on the property behind thick clusters of trees, and the nearest neighbors said they had no idea there were that many animals, or that the animals were neglected. A loud chorus of barks and wails could be heard on the property as deputies and animal control workers walked among the dogs, feeding them and checking their condition. The end of the street was blocked off with yellow crime scene tape, and curious neighbors gathered there. Sheriff's deputies bought out an emaciated, terrified pit bull covered in sores and scars. The fur on the dog's neck was worn off, leaving pink scar tissue, and he was so thin the knobs of his spine jutted out. His ears were bloody stumps that appeared to have been chewed. But he was timid rather than aggressive, cringing against an animal control officer's legs and licking her face when she bent down to pet him. He should weigh about 50 pounds, but weighed about 30, the officer said.
The dogs remained on the property, with a deputy guarding them so the investigation can continue this morning.

Sheriff's officials said it appeared that 71 dogs will be taken to the county animal control facility for medical treatment. The remaining dogs will be kept on the property temporarily. Reporters weren't given access to the area where the dogs were being kept, but Capt. Russell said most of the animals were in very poor shape. "The conditions are deplorable," he said. "I'm very saddened by it. It hurts me personally," said Russell, who owns five dogs, four of them adopted from the Polk County Animal Shelter.

Hewitt was taken to the Polk County Jail, where he was held. Bail information was not available. He has several previous arrests, including charges of carrying a concealed weapon and another for contempt of court. Information about the disposition of those charges have not been made available.

Source: The Ledger - January 27, 2006
Update posted on Jan 28, 2006 - 2:24AM

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References

	10 News - Jan 26, 2006
	Bay News 9 - April 9, 2006

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129 dogs neglectedMulberry, FL (US)

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129 dogs neglected
Mulberry, FL (US)