But they ended up sold for meat on someone's dinner plate overseas. In a landmark case, a suspect has been charged with delivering at least one of them to slaughter. The case is the talk of the town in Madera. Sheriff John Anderson has arrested a well-known businessman for an almost unheard of crime. Billy Ray Brown Jr. That is a felony in California.
A law was passed in to protect horses. This is the first time that it has ever been enforced. So how did he get Lacey? Detective Adam McEwen said his investigation started when Lacey's owner reported her and another horse called Squirt missing. The owner told the detective that he had given the horses to Summer Rose Tex, a brand inspector with the California Department of Food and Agriculture, whom he trusted, and whom he says promised to take them to Harris farms to retire.
But instead, according to arrest records, she admitted to the owner that she had lied about where she had taken them. A paper trail led the detective across three states from California to Oregon, Washington, and across the border to a slaughterhouse in Canada.
Sakach said California is one of the only states that bans shipping horses here. And yet in over , horses went to slaughter, and many of those horses came from California. Then he proceeded to kick us out. McEwen and his boss Sheriff Anderson said they are confident there will be a conviction, because Brown admitted using a fake name in the deal. We asked him, 'If this deal you are saying is legit, then why not use your own information? He said Brown told him that from selling horses in the past that he had aroused the suspicion of Canadian authorities.
At one time or another they inquired why he was bringing so many horses to the facility. Summer Rose Tex faces grand theft charges in the case. Her attorney said she never made any promises to the owner of the horses and had no idea they were going to go to slaughter.
