Marine says his two friends shot one wild horse in Nevada

Scott Sonner

Friday, Jan. 15, 1999 | 3:37 a.m.

VIRGINIA CITY, Nev. -- A Marine accused of taking part in the slaughter of 34 wild horses said he saw his two friends shoot one horse but doesn't know anything about the other animals killed in a canyon just east of Reno.

"I watched my two friends kill this horse without doing anything about it. Yes, that is wrong. That is what I'm going to court for. But we did not kill 34 horses that night," Lance Cpl. Darien Brock said.

"I saw them kill one," Brock said in a jailhouse interview Thursday with KGTV in San Diego. "Maybe they did go back, maybe they didn't. Maybe there was somebody else out there, I don't know."

Also arrested was fellow Marine, Lance Cpl. Scott Brendle, 21, and construction worker Anthony Merlino, 20, high school buddies of Brock. The Marines were home on leave from their bases in California.

Merlino, who bragged about shooting birds in the yard, gutted a deer on his living room carpet and left dead ducks lying around his apartment, was fighting extradition Friday from California to Nevada's Storey County.

All three suspects face the same charges - grand theft, grand larceny and poisoning, maiming or killing another person's animal - punishable by up to 15 years in jail.

Brendle, 21, Reno, was expected to waive extradition and return to Nevada to face charges, prosecutors said.

Brock admitted he had killed a wild horse years ago in an unrelated incident.

"I killed one six years ago," he said.

He said he was shocked and scared when he heard 34 horses had been shot in the area where he and his friends had been.

"Terror. Sheer terror. Fear beyond imagination," he said.

The two Marines were home on leave when the horses were shot Dec. 27, authorities said.

All three men - who attended Reno's Wooster High School together - are accused of shooting the wild mustangs that roam the hillsides about 5 miles east of the Reno-Sparks area. Some of the carcasses were found within 1 mile of U.S. Interstate 80.

Brock, who was stationed at Camp Pendleton in San Diego, was transferred to a mental health facility after he mentioned suicide Wednesday night, but later returned to jail.

Brendle was transferred on Wednesday from the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms east of Los Angeles to a nearby jail pending his extradition to Nevada, said the jail watch commander, Sgt. Gerry Tessler.

Merlino posted $60,000 bail and was released Thursday from the Washoe County Jail in Reno.

"Mr. Merlino maintains his innocence," defense lawyer Scott Freeman said. "Everybody is so quick to judge this young man. That's what we have courts for."