Jury Trial in Animal Cruelty Case

WINNSBORO – The Aug. 30 hearing for a Winnsboro horse owner, charged with animal cruelty, was postponed last week after the defendant in the case requested a jury trial. Calvin D. Carter, 52, of Hungry Hollow Road, will now have his case heard on Oct. 4 at 2 p.m. in Magistrate’s Court.

Carter was charged July 19 on six counts of ill treatment to animals after investigators with the Fairfield County Sheriff’s Office and Fairfield Animal Control discovered a half dozen horses that “were not being taken care of properly and needed to be fed,” according to a Sheriff’s report. Photographs of the horses were examined by a Columbia veterinarian who told investigators that, “on a scale of 1 to 10, these horses were at a 5 or below” because of lack of adequate food and nourishment.

The Sheriff’s Office was originally called to the Hungry Hollow pasture on July 16 after receiving an anonymous complaint about Carver’s horses. Lt. Roger L. Haney and David Brown, Director of Fairfield Animal Control, were initially shown about 10 horses by Carver and each of them appeared in good health, according to the report. The report states that Carver did tell Haney and Brown that he recently put one horse down after it had been bitten by a snake. Carver reportedly told Haney that the snake-bit horse had been treated by a veterinarian out of McConnells, in York County, but the horse would not eat and could not stand on the leg that had been bitten, Carver said in the report, and had to be euthanized. But Brown said that Carver had not properly disposed of the carcass until after Brown and Haney had visited the property.

After examining the 10 horses, Haney asked Carver if he had any others, according to the report. Carver said he did not.

The next day, Haney received a second anonymous call about Carver’s horses at the address. The caller said there were at least four horses, less than a year old, that were all “in real bad shape,” the report states. When Brown and Haney returned to Hungry Hollow Road on July 18, the emaciated horses were discovered and Carver was hit with the animal cruelty charges. On July 30, Haney contacted the McConnells veterinarian whom Carver had said treated the snake-bit horse, but that vet said he had not treated any of Carver’s horses since 2010.

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