Story is wild
Little girl was part of a county fair agro-educational program where they raise an animal for a few months and at the end it’s slaughtered. Supposed to teach them about the economics of farming and stuff.
But the little girl loved her goat so much she was crying on the day her goat was supposed to be taken away, so her mom sent the county fair people an email saying “I’ll pay for the goat and any expenses. We’ve had several deaths in the family in the past year, I don’t wanna take away one more thing my little girl loves.” Technically the goat had already been sold at auction, so the mom was on the hook for about $1000, only about $70 of which would have been profit for the county fair.
The county fair people were irate and got law enforcement involved, over this “breach of contract”. They literally got a fucking judge to sign a search warrant, authorizing them to go to this little girl’s house and search every room and every cabinet or box “large enough to contain a small goat”. The sheriff’s deputies seized the goat, and whoever they gave it to immediately slaughtered it, though they were supposed to wait until some kind of agreement had been worked out.
In the county fair’s initial email correspondence with the girl’s mother, they made it clear that they were pissed off because the story of the little girl who loved her goat was circulating on social media making them look bad, and they felt the girl needed to be taught a lesson about keeping your promises or whatever. So they refused the mother’s offer to pay for it, and insisted they get the goat. Even if it meant sending the fucking cops into her house lmao.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-30/goat-slaughter-shasta-county-fair
the congressman who bought the goat didn’t have any objections to the family saving the goat from slaughter either! it’s fucking insane that the cops were so eager to play act their swat commando fantasies that they played stooge to the benefit of no one except some self important local organizers!
Alternate link, LAtimes locks their stuff behind paywalls sometimes
Don’t forget the part where the goat wasn’t where they had a warrant to search, so they drove 500 miles, leaving the area they have legal jurisdiction in, then searched a farm they didn’t have a warrant for ans seized the goat. The fair then had the goat slaughtered, even though a court had ordered them to keep it alive until ownership was resolved and despite the fact that both potential owners of the goat had decided to keep it alive.
They broke multiple laws in order to “teach” a little girl the “lesson” that “everybody has to follow the rules”.
I sure hope all of the complaints sent to Shasta District Fair CEO Melanie Silva, whose decisions these were and continues to defend her actions, are polite and don’t waste too much ink. I’m certain nobody would take advantage of the fact that the Sasha District Fair and Event Center’s contact page lists their phone and fax numbers, not to mention the email form below that.
Would be a shame if that information was to circulate far an wide, and ruin that despicable woman's easter holidays
I found the lawsuit filing. It is a work of art, brief and to the point. If you read nothing else, check out page 2, the section headed Nature of the Action. Magnificent.
One of the things that bugs me in the notes is a bunch of people being like 'it's a livestock animal, it's her fault for getting attached' and.
My dudes, I cannot emphasize enough that the little girl's emotional attachment to the goat is in fact the least of the issues with this story. The main issue in this story is the fact that a bunch of cops broke multiple laws, including the unlawful entry to the property the goat was being held, the unlawful seizure and destruction of said goat, and the unlawful use of a criminal search warrant in a civil dispute case, just to start with.
The little girl owned the goat. At no point in the proceedings - and indeed at no point in the proceedings in the course of the normal auction-purchase-slaughter of a livestock animal in this program - did the fair own the goat. At no point in the proceedings did the person who successfully bid on the goat actually own it - he had made the winning bid to purchase rights to the meat. He hadn't even done that yet! The goat legally and incontrovertibly belonged to the little girl. The very worst that should have happened in this story is a brief property ownership dispute in a civil court.
The fair CEO decided to unlawfully force the auction of the goat, and, when the girl's mother began to dispute her actions, to make a false claim of theft, with precisely ZERO legal basis, calling the cops on an already emotionally fragile child, and then had the temerity to be angry with the child's mother because the story was making them look bad on social media.
Regardless of your opinion on the meat industry, livestock slaughter, or 4H, 'cops drive 500 miles, perform an illegal search, seizure and destruction of an American citizen's property, on the word of a biased 3rd party with zero legal rights to the property in question' should make you angry. Because it is a violation of civil rights, and also had no motive besides needless cruelty to an already grieving child.
News to know: The next court update on this is sometime in October 2024. I'm watching this case because it covers a lot of different facets of how contracts work, minors rights, property rights in the face of law enforcement seizures and searches, and how does one county fair have so much brutality to wield against a then-nine-year-old. I would not be surprised if this gets bogged down again with more counter-suits. It's absolutely ghoulish that they're doing all this over less than 1000$ of goat and one little girls grief. I hope that the judge who sees this case knows just how dangerous it is to dismiss, since this is a matter of third-party property rights infringement using law enforcement agents as bludgeons. The Sheriffs *cannot* be allowed to maintain extrajudicial authority.
UPDATE:
GIRL WINS $300,000
Shasta County agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a lawsuit over a decision to use deputies to seize a girl's pet goat to be slaughtered. It's
