Editor’s note: The first in a three-part series on Kentucky’s animal abuse laws.
By R.G. Dunlop
Special to NKyTribune
“Disgusting.”
That’s how Louisville Metro Police described the condition of Kareem Amin Garner’s home near Churchill Downs after they executed a search warrant there on June 6, 2024. Officers found what they later described in a Facebook post as four pit bull dogs “in terrible condition, living in feces-infested kennels or trapped in mud, leg high. Several of the pups have heartworms,” a potentially fatal disease.
Officers said they also found various supplements, medications, dog fighting paperwork, and various devices, all “indicative of dog fighting.”
In their June 24, 2024, Facebook post, police further asserted that Garner had been “operating a dog fighting ring for a long time,” that “his stature in the dog-fighting world is considered ‘prolific’” and that he was “apparently well-known in the region for dog fighting.”
The department added: “We’re relieved he’s facing several felony charges.”
But that relief may have been short-lived.
After pleading guilty in March 2025 to four counts of dog fighting, a felony, and four counts of second-degree cruelty to animals, a misdemeanor, Garner was sentenced to a total of three years in prison.
Instead of being required to spend time in custody, however, he was granted five years of pretrial diversion, which allowed him to avoid incarceration. And according to KOOL, the state’s “online offender lookup” website, diversion is where the 49-year-old Garner remains today.
Erran Huber, public information officer for the Jefferson Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office, said it recommended to the court that the charges be diverted “as part of an agreement for the defendant to plead guilty.”
“We make all of our decisions based on what can be proven in court by the available evidence and the best interests of justice,” Huber said in an email.
Asked if LMPD thought Garner’s sentence was appropriate in light of how the department described him and his activities in its Facebook post, Mathew Sanders, the department’s media and public relations contact replied:
“As law enforcement, we work in partnership with the Commonwealth and honor the plea agreements put forward. Our role is not guided by personal beliefs, but by the decisions and standards set by the courts.”
Garner is hardly the only animal abuser in Kentucky who has received little or no state court-imposed jail or prison time in recent years.
On July 9, 2024, Kenneth Lamar Wingard shot another person’s dog near Danville, according to the Boyle County Sheriff’s office. After killing Hank, the beagle, while “very intoxicated,” Wingard hid Hank’s carcass in his truck, locked it, and left the area, also leaving behind numerous shell casings and a trail of blood, the sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post.
Wingard, who is now 30 years old, confessed to the shooting, according to the sheriff’s office, and was charged with animal torture and tampering with physical evidence, both felonies. He too was sentenced to five years’ pretrial diversion, beginning last fall.
A review by this reporter of more than 50 federal and state criminal cases involving animal abuse and neglect in Kentucky found that of 30 cases resolved since 2020, 13 were dismissed, were granted probation, home detention, pretrial diversion, or were conditionally discharged.
Probation involves supervision ordered by the court, following a conviction, instead of incarceration. Home detention, also an alternative to incarceration, requires the defendant to be confined to his or her residence except to engage in court-approved activities such as work, school, or medical appointments.
Pretrial diversion allows the accused to avoid prosecution and a possible conviction if court-imposed conditions are met. And a conditionally discharged case is one that can be dismissed later if the defendant who pleads guilty or has been found guilty does what the court has directed.
Of the 16 state court cases that had been concluded, just two resulted in more than six months of incarceration. In addition to Garner and Wingard, 10 of the 16 were not required to spend any time in custody.
Animal abusers with Kentucky ties received somewhat less leniency in federal court. A review of nine Kentucky U.S. District Court animal abuse cases adjudicated since 2020 found that six defendants received some jail or prison time, including four sentences of at least a year. The other three defendants were sentenced to home detention.
One defendant, Timothy Sizemore, was sentenced to 26 months in custody.
In at least three of the nine federal cases, the defendants received a much lighter penalty than recommended by the prosecution, court records show.
Overall, Kentucky’s animal-protection laws do not fare well compared to those in other states.
According to the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s most recent annual report ranking the various states’ animal- protection laws, Kentucky’s were some of the worst. North Dakota had the nation’s weakest, followed from the bottom up by Alabama, Idaho, Kentucky, and Mississippi, according to the ALDF’s 2025 report.
To cite just one example of Kentucky’s feeble laws: Until 2020, Kentucky prohibited veterinarians from reporting suspected animal cruelty. It was the only state in the nation with such a ban. The original, proposed language of what ultimately became the new law required veterinarians to report suspected cruelty. The version enacted in April 2020 merely allowed that reporting.
In approximately half of the states, reporting by veterinarians of suspected animal abuse is mandatory.
“The plight of an animal in the Bluegrass State is far from hopeful,” according to the Animal Rescue Site by GreaterGood. “Those found guilty of killing animals in Kentucky often face no more than a fine, with a maximum five years behind bars for the most heinous crimes. Abuse cases are treated with much less interest, only warranting a misdemeanor.”
Prison sentences for animal abuse
Morgan Jade Barrick fancied herself as a dog breeder and trainer. She even had an enticing name for her business: Golden Grove Kennels (website no longer available). But Barrick’s treatment of the dogs in her care was anything but golden, court records show. In real life, she was an animal abuser.
When an animal control officer responding to a complaint arrived at Barrick’s Radcliff home on the morning of May 5, 2023, he smelled “a strong odor of decay,” according to a report by the officer, Christopher Siler of Hardin County Animal Care and Control.
Siler and two Radcliff police officers went inside, where they discovered 21 dead dogs, including nearly a dozen in wire crates, three in garbage bags, a lifeless puppy in a bathtub, and another at the top of the basement stairs. More dead dogs were found bagged in a white van parked outside and “that also smelled of something deceased,” Siler’s report stated.
Seven of the dead dogs were found in or near Barrick’s garage, including six in wire crates. When animal-control and Radcliff Police officers opened the door, the odor was such that it forced the officers “to wait several minutes before we could safely enter the garage,” according to the report. Once inside, they also found a leg and tail that did not match any of the other dead dogs “found in the piles of garbage in the garage,” the report stated. Subsequent veterinary analysis showed that at least several of the dogs had died due to starvation.
Barrick was charged with 36 felony counts of animal torture, along with nine misdemeanors for allegedly failing to license or vaccinate dogs. After a Hardin County jury convicted Barrick last November 26, Circuit Judge John David Simcoe sentenced her in January to six years in prison. Barrick is currently an inmate in the Hardin County Detention Center.
Fourteen other dogs found on Barrick’s property were still alive. One that was not had belonged to Maryann Carter-Laventure of Palmer, Massachusetts, who had sent her dog Cyrus to be trained by Barrick in 2021.
Barrick, who is now 29 years old, had been recommended to Carter-Laventure. But one year later, Cyrus was dead, with pneumonia in his right lung and a weight loss from 140 pounds to 96. Barrick has been charged criminally in connection with Cyrus’s death; that case is pending in Jefferson Circuit Court.
“I feel horrible. I’m disgusted that it’s been over four years since he was murdered,” Carter-Laventure said in a telephone interview from her home in Massachusetts. “I can’t stand her. I’m disgusted at the fact that she’s gotten away with this for so long.
”I want her to stay in jail.”
Of the 16 state court cases reviewed that had been resolved since 2020, Barrick’s was one of just two that resulted in more than six months of incarceration. The other case involved Jeffrey Horstman of Boone County, who was convicted in August 2025 of torture of a dog or cat, wanton endangerment, and tampering with physical evidence.
Horstman, now 56 years old, was sentenced to five years in prison, and is serving that sentence in the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in Oldham County, according to KOOL, the offender lookup website.
Little or no time behind bars
A little before noon on February 17, 2025, State Police Trooper Eric Hines responded to a call about a possible cockfight near Bardstown in Nelson County.
When he arrived at the site, Hines found 20 cars in the driveway, multiple people in a barn, spikes for roosters, and one rooster with spikes already on its feet, according to a citation issued by Hines. The cockfight had not yet begun, but Aaron John Thompson, the property owner, “admitted to what was going to happen,” the citation stated.
As Hines and a fellow trooper approached the barn, a boy saw them and announced, “the cops are here,” according to a separate report by Hines, who said he saw “numerous roosters in the barn in cages and in box-type housing.” Several people from the barn “fled on foot across the field into the woods,” the report stated.
Hines wrote that he also found evidence in the barn of a previous cockfight, with feathers and blood on the ground.
Thompson was charged with second-degree animal cruelty, a misdemeanor offense punishable by up to a year in jail. But the charge was dismissed on July 8, 2025, at Hines’s request, according to Nelson County Attorney Arch C. McKay, III.
McKay said in a brief telephone interview that he did not know why Hines asked for the dismissal. Neither Hines, State Police Spokeswoman Sherry Bray, nor Morgan Hall, communications director for the Kentucky Justice & Public Safety Cabinet, which includes the state police, responded to requests to explain the circumstances surrounding the dismissal of Thompson’s case.
When Jessica Benet Cooper surrendered two puppies to Louisville Metro Animal Services officials on December 16, 2024, she initially claimed that they were strays she had found, according to a criminal complaint filed against her. One of the puppies was so thin, cold, and otherwise unhealthy that it had to be euthanized, according to the complaint.
But subsequent investigation by LMAS determined that the two puppies were not strays. Indeed Cooper had showcased them and three others in photos and videos on Facebook, saying they were “so cute” and would soon be up for sale, the investigation found.
Cooper eventually confessed to owning them, according to the complaint. After she pleaded guilty in July 2025 to second-degree animal cruelty, the judge gave Cooper a two-year conditional discharge, which could result in the case being removed from her record if she abides by the law and any court-imposed conditions.
Hannah Mendez received a sentence of three years’ pretrial diversion after pleading guilty in Fayette County last year to animal torture. And on March 20, 2025, Thomas Bagwell, III, was sentenced to 30 days in jail and and five years of pretrial diversion after pleading guilty in Trimble County to one felony count of animal torture and 10 misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty. He had taped 11 puppies in a box and abandoned them on the side of a road in December 2024, according to news accounts.
While pretrial diversion typically allows the defendant to avoid a conviction, not everyone thinks it is an appropriate way to deal with animal abusers.
Joye Keeley, a retired Louisville Metro Police lieutenant and an animal-rights activist, said she is “absolutely opposed” to diversion in an animal abuse cases such as those involving Mendez and Bagwell, “involving cruelty and torture to any living creature.”
“I can see them not going to prison, but I don’t think diversion should ever happen,” Keeley said in a telephone interview. “That person can work in a day care, a school, a nursing home, any place where there are vulnerable populations. By diverting acts of cruelty, I don’t think that is protecting the public.”
Tomorrow: Part II Animal abuse