HOULKA, Miss. (WTVA) — The Have-A-Heart Horse Rescue Agency says it found 12 starving horses in a field in Chickasaw County.
Agency members say the horses belonged to Chickasaw County Sheriff Jimmy Simmons, who apparently rented property back on July 1 in the Atlanta community so they could graze.
The brother of the man who rented the property says the horses eventually ate the grass off of the property and needed food.
He says they contacted the sheriff, who brought some hay.
Eventually, he contacted horse rescuers who tell WTVA.com that by the time they arrived on the scene, all of the horses except one and a donkey had been removed.
The horse was taken away to a safe place.
For his part, Simmons says he was doing his duty under the law to remove horses and other animals from the roads of Chickasaw County that have been abandoned.
"In this case, I never could find out who these horses belonged to," says Simmons. "I had other horses in the same pasture. I've been doing this for years. And last year, I lost $600 out of my pocket because we didn't have nowhere to go with them, and the judge ordered them to me."
"By the time I fed them all winter and sold them all, I lost $600 out of my pocket," he adds.
The sheriff says the county has no other means to feed the abandoned animals, leaving him between a rock and a hard place.
He's still apparently feeding some of the animals as he showed us at his property in Houlka.
As for the horse that was rescued, here's what he had to say: "On this horse, the horse did get down. He was all messed up in his rear end to start with. They called me jumping up and down about it. And I said, 'Look, if you think I care, you can have it.' I gave it to them."
Meanwhile, the horse rescuers say they are worried the sheriff is simply keeping the animals long enough to be sold at an auction.
They say that would likely lead the horses to a slaughterhouse.
But the sheriff says using the animals for what he describes as "useful purposes" is good.
The agency is threatening legal action against the sheriff but plans to talk to the district attorney's office first.
