11-year-old girl wins $300K settlement after police seized and slaughtered her pet goat
Gerrard Kaonga
Featured Image Credit: Advancing Law for Animals
An 11-year-old girl has gotten a major payout from a police department in California after it seized her pet goat and had it butchered in a bizarre case.
A child had been left heartbroken after her pet goat was seized by police when she told her mother she could not bear the idea of it being slaughtered.
The mother of the child, Jessica Long, sued the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office back in 2023, a year after her daughter, who was nine at the time, had her goat Cedar seized.
Last Friday (November 1), US District Judge Dale A. Drozd approved the settlement that requires Shasta County, California, pays $300,000 to settle the issue out of court.
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Back when Long’s daughter was nine, she had begun raising the goat for a livestock auction for the Shasta District Fair as part of a program to teach young people how to care for farm animals.
However, when push came to shove, the child could not part with her pet and told her mother she did not want to give him up to be slaughtered.
According to a New York Post report, the lawsuit said: “After the auction, [the daughter] would not leave Cedar’s side.
“[She] loved Cedar and the thought of him going to slaughter was something she could not bear. While sobbing in his pen beside him, [she] communicated to her mother she didn’t want Cedar to go to slaughter.”
When Long attempted to intervene, the fair said its rules wouldn’t allow the pair to take the goat.
Cedar was sold to Republican California State senator Brian Dahle at a price of $902, seven percent of which was to go to the auction.
However, Dahle agreed to nullify the purchase and even paid the fair its commission, but things didn’t stop there.
As the fair refused to release the goat, the mother decided to take it back and take him to a farm in Sanoma County.
The Shasta County Sheriff’s Office then obtained a warrant, and police drove nearly 500 miles roundtrip to take the goat back, however they allegedly had a warrant for the wrong farm.
According to the lawsuit, they eventually located the goat and seized it without a warrant. The goat is believed to have been slaughtered but it is not clear by who.
Vanessa Shakib, an attorney representing Long, said: “Unfortunately, this litigation cannot bring Cedar home.
“But the $300,000 settlement with the County of Shasta and Shasta County Sheriff’s Office is the first step forward.”