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Last updated on Wednesday, March 20, 2013
(VIGO COUNTY) - Vigo and Sullivan County Sheriff’s Deputies following up on information regarding a possible rooster fighting ring that operates in several counties in the Wabash Valley.
Matt Gregory of WTHI reports that police obtained a search warrant and carried it out Tuesday afternoon in southern Vigo County.
It happened just off of State Road 246, both sheriffs' departments and humane department officers searched the property of Charles Piker.
They say in a barn they found nearly 100 roosters pinned up in cages, those birds appear to be used for fighting.
The also found items associated with rooster fighting.
Officials told us; inside the barns they found several dead roosters as well as badly injured ones.
Right now they are saying this is a case of animal abuse at the least and possibly worse.
A cross country rooster fighting ring.
"Part of our information that we are working on gathering, is to establish it's certainly multicounty at this time. Again, this is alleged allegations, there is more investigating to do, but we are here serving a search warrant and our findings are turned over to the prosecutors office," Clark Cottom, from the Vigo County Sheriff's Department told us.
According to Indiana Code, animal fighting is a class D felony, a sentence that carries up to three years in prison.
Other charges include a class B misdemeanor for possession of paraphernalia associated with an animal fight.
The sheriff's department said late Tuesday night they carried out another search warrant in Sullivan county at the residence of Jeffrey McMahan. At his residence they found more rooster fighting paraphernalia as well as a felony amount of marijuana.
He is currently in police custody.
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