- Tennessee, USA -
The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office has finally arrested 51-year-old BRIAN JEFFERSON (pictured below).
FOX 13 reports that on January 28, 2020, deputies responded to an animal cruelty report in the 4900 block of Egypt Central Road.
An Animal Health Technician for the Tennessee Department of Agriculture said there was a 22- to 25-year-old white saddle horse on the property who was dying.
The poor horse was malnourished to the point that he/she could not stand up and his/her back was covered in rain rot fungus.
According to the affidavit, the horse’s rib cage and hip bones were showing.
A veterinarian who later arrived on the scene made the decision to euthanize the horse.
The other three horses, Hawk, Eagle, and Cherish, were also found to be malnourished and did not have access to food.
The poor souls had eaten bark off nearby trees.
At the time of the incident, JEFFERSON told deputies someone was supposed to be feeding the horses but had not been doing so.
JEFFERSON then turned over ownership of the three surviving horses to the Tennessee Department of Agriculture.
At that point, Lori Collins, Director of Redemption Road Rescue in Jackson, stepped in.
She spent 6 months re-habilitating them and got them fully healthy enough to be adopted.
As Redemption Road Rescue wrote in a Facebook post, Hawk, Eagle, and Cherish have been adopted and are living their best life now and “their original owner finally answers for his neglect of these sweet horses.”
JEFFERSON was arrested on Monday, February 8, and charged with aggravated cruelty to animals and three counts of cruelty to animals.
WREG reports that on Tuesday, February 9, a woman who said she’s JEFFERSON’s sister, claimed that the horses were not his, but he let friends keep them on his property.
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