Idaho man convicted of 4 counts of animal cruelty after horses found dead in pasture
A Payette County jury convicted a man Wednesday of four counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty after his horses were found dead in a pasture last year.
After a two-day trial, Ivan “Shannon” Pearce II, of New Plymouth, was found guilty of all four counts. He is set for sentencing on Jan. 3. Pearce faces up to a year in jail and a fine of $1,000 for each of the four counts.
The Payette County investigation began after the four horses were found dead near an empty water trough in Payette in July 2018. He told investigators that he had left a hose running in the 1,000-gallon trough, and police found evidence that it was inadvertently shut off by another party, according to previous reports.
The animals were in a a pasture near Hurd Lane, just south of Northeast 10th Avenue.
Payette Police Chief Mark Clark previously told the Statesman that they found evidence that irrigation company workers had shut the water off, but that he believed Pearce had been negligent in not checking on the horses.
This story was originally published November 14, 2019 at 10:45 AM.
