A local cattle farmer said he found two of his baby cows slaughtered Wednesday morning.
“They just kill them and butcher them,” Robert Capote said.
His cattle farm is in the northwest part of Miami-Dade County, near I-75 and Florida’s Turnpike. Capote fed the heifers last night, but overnight somebody broke into the pen.
“But once they're inside the cow pens they had to get rid of the five that were in here and leave these two alone, and then go from there,” he said.
The angry farmer said the cows are “family” to him.
“I wish the perpetrators get caught, but we'll see,” said Capote, who said this isn’t the first time he’s made such a discovery on his farm.
A Miami-Dade Police investigator came to the scene Wednesday.
So did South Florida animal abuse investigator Richard Couto, who said he thinks the killers used a power tool to dismember the heifers.
“We found multiple stab wounds in their coats, there was blood in their windpipes, which shows that they actually drowned very slowly on their own blood,” he said. “They were tied over to a post here for a bit while they bled out.”
Couto is sure the animals were killed for their meat, which is typically sold on South Florida’s illegal beef black market.
“And they don't even have the courtesy and the ethics to put a bullet in this animal. They butcher it alive,” he said. “Disgusting, violent people we’re talking about here that belong in prison. They need to be caught.”
But typically police don’t find the perpetrators in such circumstances, Couto and Capote said.
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