Landscapers found skeletons of dead animals on a property.
A 22-year-old woman in Texas was detained last week after it was claimed that landscapers at her property found the carcasses of scores of dead animals on her ranch, including 12 horses and 24 dogs.
According to the records analyzed by Law&Crime, Rachel Ann Sword was detained on Friday and charged with two felonies: one crime of cruelty to a non-livestock animal, which is a third-degree offense, and one count of physical abuse of livestock, which is a state jail felony after skeletons of dead animals were found in her property.
A representative of the Collin County Sheriff’s Office informed Law & Crime that the investigation into Sword started with a complaint made by landscapers, who had been working on the site regarding the discovery of multiple dead animals which are horses.
CCSO deputies and Collin County Animal Services on August 1 carried out a seizure warrant authorizing the retrieval of all living animals present on her property located in the 700 block of Graybill Road in Westminster based on the complaint about the discovery of dead animals and a subsequent investigation by Collin County Sheriff’s personnel.
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Investigators discovered skeletons of dead animals, 24 dead dogs, and 12 dead horses, throughout the site, all of which had advanced states of decomposition.
The complainant, Deanne Murillo, claims that in January she informed authorities about dead animals on that site.
She provided NBC 5 with images of other horses she claimed to be unwell, as well as dead animals on a trailer, which were taken at the time.
Detectives found out during their investigation, according to a report from Dallas Fox station KDFW, that Sword’s elderly grandparents owned the property where the animals were located.
A dead dog was found inside a cage close to the grandparents’ home after the scene’s investigators reportedly claimed they smelt something foul nearby.
As they continued their search of the property, deputies allegedly discovered 23 additional dead animals specifically dogs in varying states of decomposition, some of which were also kept in cages without food or water while others had been crammed into enclosures that were constantly exposed to the sun.
Twelve dead animals, the horses, were also discovered on the premises by deputies.
Sword reportedly told investigators during an interview that her husband was the owner of the animals, but she said he passed away around three weeks previously. According to KDFW, she allegedly claimed that following his death, she realized she was in charge of the animals’ welfare but insisted that she was too depressed to care for them. Files, however, purportedly showed that there had been at least 16 complaints about allegations of animal mistreatment on the farm since 2019.
Sword was detained and placed in the Collin County Detention Facility, where she is still being held on a $85,000 bond.
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