On Friday, former NYPD officer Jeanne Ryan, 48, of 132 Gate Schoolhouse Road in Goshen and the owner of Argus Farm, was charged with one count of cruelty to animals, a misdemeanor, and five counts of failure to properly dispose of dead animals, a violation, the Hudson Valley SPCA said.
The charges fall under state agriculture and markets law.
Gene Hecht, the Hudson Valley SPCA’s chief of humane law enforcement, released grisly photos, one showing the undernourished, 10-year-old stallion standing beside a skeleton of a dead horse in his stall.
Hecht said a 2-month-old foal was found dead next to its dead mother.
Hecht said the July 29 raid at Argus Farm at 132 Gate Schoolhouse Road turned up skeletons of four adult horses and the foal in a barn and remains of six other horses piled up in the woods on the 47-acre property. The stallion was placed in what Hecht called “protective custody.”
Ryan, a former NYPD officer, is due for arraignment Sept. 13 in Town Court. The animal cruelty charge could carry a sentence of up to a year in jail.
Officers from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Town of Goshen police conducted the July raid.
Hecht said “without a doubt” all the horses found dead on the property died of starvation, but he said investigators couldn’t prove it because the internal organs had deteriorated beyond the point where forensic examination could establish the cause of death.
Can they not do a bone marrow test on a leg bone?
He said there “wasn’t a drop of feed” on the property and the only hay they found was moldy and inedible.
He said authorities moved on the property after a complaint was filed. He declined to describe the origin of the complaint.
No one answered Ryan’s personal phone or the number displayed on the sign at the entrance to Argus Farm Friday. A woman who answered Ryan’s phone earlier in the week directed inquiries to attorney Frederick Win, whose practice is in Clifton, N.J. Win said Ryan had not retained him.
Hecht said investigators found 10 live horses on the property, in addition to the malnourished stallion. He said those horses’ body weights were OK, but their hooves were in “terrible shape.”
Hecht said that by law, as long as the horses’ weight is normal, authorities cannot seize them. He said he will return Monday to make sure Ryan has addressed the hoof problems.
Ryan is known in the Town of Goshen as an outspoken opponent of the proposed Legoland theme park. Drawing on her expertise as a former NYPD officer, she has spoken at public meetings about potential security and crowd-control problems.
“If she had spent as much time taking care of the animals as she did protesting Legoland every Saturday, those horses would still be alive,” Hecht said. “Animals can’t complain; they can’t tell you when they’re starving to death.”
(Record Online - August 11, 2017)
No feed? I see grass. Grass is horse feed.
ReplyDeleteAnd she had others of normal weight? What did she do, just forget the starving ones existed? Someone needs to get her a mental evaluation.
Karma does not lose an address!!!!
ReplyDeleteIt should be 2 years for EACH animal that died under her care.
ReplyDelete