Two Navy airmen arrested for killing seven pregnant cows

Thursday, Sept. 23, 1999 | 9:56 a.m.

Joshua Osinski, 23, Scottsdale, Ariz., and Alan Peters, 21, Coos Bay, Ore., were booked Wednesday on seven felony counts of grand larceny. Their bail was set at $35,000.

The two airmen are based at Lemoore, Calif. They had been training at Fallon Naval Air Station and were arrested on the Fallon base earlier this week in the shootings of the cows southwest of town, Churchill County Sheriff Bill Lawry.

Fallon is about 60 miles east of Reno, about 55 miles from the Lockwood area where dozens of wild horses were shot to death last December. Two ex-Marines and their high school buddy have been charged and are awaiting a trial in that case in neighboring Storey County.

The cows were shot multiple times, one as many as 12 times, near Sheckler Reservoir, investigators said. All seven were pregnant and one was shot as she gave birth, they said.

"It's totally inhumane," said Roger Mills, an area rancher who owned one of the cows found dead on Sunday.

"I just can't understand the sporting instinct when a cow just stands there and looks at you."

Both men allegedly confessed to the shootings, Lawry said. But there was no apparent motive, he said.

"We would like to know the answer to that," he told the Reno Gazette-Journal. "Their statement was they went out to shoot rabbits and their quote was, 'We shot some moos."'

It didn't appear the suspects had anything against the ranchers who owned the cows, the sheriff said.

"They didn't even know them. It's just high-priced vandalism. I don't think they realize people make a living off these animals."

A horseback rider found the dead cows Sunday and notified Mills and Larry Kyte, who owned six of the cows. They called the sheriff.

"It was so devastating," said Ynez Kyte, Larry Kytes' wife. "I was afraid to walk over the hill for fear of what I would see. It was such a senseless, brutal thing."

Lawry said a license plate helped lead them to Osinski. Investigators found shell casings and tire prints in the area. They seized from the suspects a Rugar 223-caliber semiautomatic rifle, a pump-action 30-06 Remington and a Rugar 10-22, 22-caliber semiautomatic rifle.

Osinski is an aviation-electronics technician who joined the Navy in November 1995.

Peters is a plane captain, a crew member who conducts safety checks of the outside of an aircraft before take off. He joined the Navy in 1997.

Both men accompanied squadron pilots going through tactical and weapons training at Fallon NAS.

Dennis McGrath, a Navy spokesman at Lemoore, said there's been no decision how the Navy will respond.

"It ranges from we could wait and see the results of the civilian process, to dishonorable discharge, to the military deciding to try them a whole range of things," he said.

The cows are valued between $800 and $1,000. Mills said he keeps about 26 head of cattle on the 100 square miles of Bureau of Reclamation grazing land.

"You don't expect anything like this," he said. "It's sickening. I guess what affected me the most was one of Kytes cows was lying down and having a calf when they shot her."