Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 14, 1991 TAG: 9102140404
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Short
An attorney for six people who say they own some of the birds promptly appealed.
That means the chickens will live at least until the appeal is heard in May, court officials said.
General District Judge J.C. Crumbley III entered the order a week after he heard attorneys argue the fate of the gamecocks for nearly four hours.
Since then, attorneys apparently were unable to work out an agreement about the birds, seized by investigators during the raid of a Jan. 26 cockfight.
So, Crumbley ordered the chickens "humanely destroyed" by animal wardens.
"From the evidence presented, this court finds that these defendants cruelly treated some 46 chickens by willfully inflicting inhumane injury upon, or unnecessarily maiming, mutilating, or killing said fowl, or having willfully set on foot, engaged in, or furthered such acts of cruelty or having caused or permitted such acts to have been done by others," the judge wrote in his order.
Crumbley said he heard no promises that the owners would not treat the birds similarly in the future.
"This court finds that these defendants are therefore unable to adequately provide for these chickens, and are unfit to own them," he said.
State law allowed the judge three options for dealing with the birds: sell them at auction, adopt them out or put them to death.
The first two choices, Crumbley said, wouldn't solve the problem, given the "single use to which these animals are put."
by CNB