Thursday, Sept. 9, 1999 | 10:07 a.m.
VIRGINIA CITY, Nev. - Testifying against three men accused of killing wild horses, Nevada's state veterinarian described in gruesome detail the multiple gunshot wounds suffered by more than two dozen of the mustangs.
Gun shots shattered the spines of several horses, which collapsed with broken backs and died quickly on the hillsides east of Reno, David Thain said Wednesday in Storey County Justice Court.
Two horses were shot through the center of the heart and another was shot "right between the eyes," he said.
Each of the dead horses he examined was shot two or more times. Four of the slaughtered mares were pregnant, including one that began to abort the fetus "in her last throes of death," he said.
Thain's testimony came during the preliminary hearing for two ex-Marines and a former high school buddy accused of shooting 27 horses east of Reno on Dec. 27.
The hearing moves into its fifth day today for former Lance Crpls. Scott Brendle, 22, and Darien Brock, 21, and Anthony Merlino, 20, a Reno construction worker.
All three men have admitted to shooting at horses at that time, but deny killing any more than one.
The hearing will determine whether there is enough evidence to bound the three defendants over to Storey County District Court for a criminal trial.
Thain testified Wednesday that several of the horses apparently suffered for days before authorities chased them down and destroyed them.
"This one, I'm emotionally upset," Thain said, asking the judge for a moment to compose himself as prosecutors' questions moved to horse No. 23.
"There was evidence at the site that indicated the horse thrashed around. It had paddled with both front and back legs, knocking down the brush. It banged its head by hitting it on a rock," he said.
In other testimony Wednesday, a Navy special agent said Brendle admitted he trained a rifle scope's cross hairs on a mustang, squeezed the trigger and watched it buckle to the ground.
Brendle "said the hindquarters dropped first. He thought he hit it in the torso," Navy Special Agent Mike Chapman said.
"He fired the second shot because the horse was still moving around on the ground."
Chapman testified that Brendle said he drove a Ford pickup into the hills that day after the trio had stopped at a Wal-Mart to buy a spotlight and shotgun shells.
"He had decided he was going to shoot the horse. That's why he stopped. That's why he got out of his truck," Chapman said.
"He had the cross hairs on the horse" and fired a shot from a .270-caliber bolt-action rifle, he said.
"That's when the horse fell to the ground."
Brendle fired "two or three" additional rounds into the herd but didn't believe he hit any other horses, Chapman said.
The three defendants could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted of all the charges of grand larceny, theft and killing of another person's animal - in this case, the state of Nevada's.
Much of the testimony so far has focused on statements from investigators, with no physical evidence to link any of the three to the dead horses.
Defense lawyers have highlighted the absence of fingerprints or any ballistic tests that tie the bullets to the defendants' guns and maintain the real killers are still out there.
They said in court Wednesday that the horses may actually have wandered onto state land from nearby federal property managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
In that case, the horses would be under the jurisdiction of the federal government and the defendants would have no business being prosecuted in county court, they said.
archive
