Things got more complicated this week for Hal W. Parker, the Louisiana horseman who boarded and quarantined horses for a kill pen rescue in 2018. Parker, 60, of Haile, La., has been hit with nine animal cruelty charges — seven for malnourished horses found on his property, and two for horses who were seized and later died from suspected neglect.
Earlier this year, Parker faced one felony count of theft of livestock, two felony counts of aggravated cruelty to animals and two misdemeanor counts of simple cruelty to animals. According to the Monroe News Star, the two misdemeanor counts have been dropped and he has since entered a not guilty plea to the other three charges.
Parker was a close associate of ICareIHelp, a self-professed non-profit run by Dina Alborano, and was tasked with boarding and quarantine for horses Alborano rescued from nearby auctions and kill pens. The Paulick Report first began reporting on Alborano's activities in April 2018, at which time the organization did not appear to have achieved tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service, despite claims it was a “non-profit.” New Jersey-based Alborano, who initially received support from major names in the Thoroughbred industry, raised money to purchase the horses, transport them, and keep them with Parker by requesting donations to her PayPal account. Our story, published in April, raised questions about the volume of horses taken in by Alborano and Parker in a short period of time, as well as their care in a pair of abandoned poultry houses in Farmerville, La. Horses were often poorly or wrongly identified to the public, and updates seemed unavailable on a large number after they were bailed by Alborano.
Since last summer, critics of ICareIHelp have catalogued Alborano's social media posts about horses the organization claimed to have bailed and raised concerns about the status of many of those horses. According to Tuesday's News Star article, police now say most of those horses have been located “either alive or dead.”
“The horses had eaten the bark off of the trees, and were eating dried vines off of the fence row. A large number of bones were found in the back pasture where horses had died and had not been buried,” read the warrant affidavit, per the News Star.
Read more at the News Star
https://www.thenewsstar.com/story/news/ ... 490522002/
