Horse owner faces cruelty charges

Investigators discovered the rotting carcasses of two horses and the skeletal remains of at least four others in a pasture at 1628 N.C. 10 in Newton.

The woman leasing the land, Annie Elizabeth Stein, 43, of Newton was arrested and charged with cruelty to animals Tuesday. Her three remaining horses were taken from the property and are being nursed back to health at area farms.

Michael Poovey works as a caretaker for an adjoining property and spotted a 24-year-old Arabian gelding lying in the field on Feb. 10. There were three other horses in the pasture and the animals had no food, water or shelter and the weather was bitterly cold.

When he took a closer look at the animal and saw that it was dead he called the police.

The horse had been dead for several days, according to police reports.

"I could count every bone in that animal. It looked like it was starved," Poovey said. "A healthy animal can survive the cold without any problem. This animal was just too undernourished and starved to survive the cold."

The horse was lying in a frozen barren field. Its fur was matted and its ribs and spine were showing through its thin hide.

The horse was still in the middle of the pasture three weeks after it was discovered even though Newton police have ordered Stein to bury or remove the remains.

Poovey pointed out that several trees that surround the bare pasture were missing their bark up to eight feet off the ground. He said he'd seen the horses gnawing on the bark because they had no other available food.

"If she (Stein) couldn't afford to feed the animals she should have told me and I would have fed them," he said. "When I realized something was wrong it was too late."

Newton animal control officers went to the pasture the day the call came in and checked on the three remaining animals. They all looked underfed but one looked severely malnourished, said Sgt. Steve Boyd of the Newton Police Department.

Police arrived at 4 p.m. and by 4:30 they'd loaded the horses onto a trailer and taken them to area farms to recover and regain their strength.

The horses were examined by a veterinarian and police waited for his findings before they took out a warrant for Stein's arrest.

During their subsequent investigation, officers found a second dead horse. It was just outside an electric fence behind a hill on the far side of the pasture. Its carcass was partially covered by a blue tarp, hay and small tree limbs.

The black horse under the tarp died before the horse found in the middle of the field. Police say Stein admits knowing about both horses and said they died of natural causes. She told them the horses had colic.

When officers went back to the pasture Monday, they found the skeletal remains of four more horses. One of the piles of bones was partially covered by a blue tarp.

Officers say Stein denies any knowledge of the horse skeletons.

Poovey pointed out two fresh mounds of dirt in the field and said they are the freshly dug graves of more horses.

Stein was charged with intentionally starving an animal in the case of the first dead horse spotted in the field. A criminal summons has been issued for her to appear in court on animal cruelty for the most severely malnourished and feeble horse removed from the pasture.

"We do not have any plans to charge her with the additional remains we found," Boyd said. "We're not going to go back and do autopsies on the remains."

He said the charges are misdemeanors and the bond was $500 unsecured. "They can only be felonies if you can prove malicious intent and we can't."

Stein told police some of the horses she had were rescue horses that she'd taken in to care for.

"We have been dealing with this woman for quite some time," said Boyd. He said a variety of horse-related complaints have been made against in the past two years. She's been warned and her behav-ior has been monitored.

50-50 CHANCE OF SURVIVAL

When a veterinarian examined the most severely malnourished horse – an 11-year-old Arabian gelding – he said it only had a 50-50 chance of survival, said Debra Huss.

She thinks he's going to make it.

"He's got a more spirit than he did when he first got here," she said. "Of course having food helped."

Huss and her husband Ben used their horse trailer to help the Newton Police Department relocate the horses and they've paid for many of the rehabilitation-related expenses for the three surviving horses.

Huss said she's been told that the county will reimburse them for their expenses if Stein is found guilty of animal cruelty.

She said she'd like to be reimbursed, but it's a lot more important to her to get the horses healthy and to stop any more animals from being harmed at the hands of Stein.

"My thoughts about what this lady did to these animals – she should get what she gave," Huss said. "She should never be allowed to have horses again."

She stood beside the horse stroking its mane and talking gently to him. She pointed to an open sore and a cluster of scabs on his back and said the wounds were called rain rot.

"This horse has been in severe pain," Huss said. "When we got to the field he was laying down and we had to struggle to get him into the horse trailer."

Although the horse has begun his recovery, he has a long way to go. The veterinarian said the horse weighs about 450 pounds and should weigh 900 to 1,000 pounds.