Clovis man arrested on felony animal cruelty charges

Editor’s note: Warning to readers: The following story contains graphic accounts.

CLOVIS — A Clovis man was arrested Friday on felony animal cruelty charges from an investigation that started late last year.

John Davis, 63, was charged in January with extreme cruelty to animals and tampering with evidence, both fourth-degree felonies, and five additional misdemeanor counts of cruelty to animals. He entered no plea Monday on all counts and was released that evening on an unsecured appearance bond.

In an arrest warrant affidavit, investigating Curry County Sheriff Deputy Erica Romero paints a gruesome picture of what she encountered in January while serving a search warrant on Davis’ property north of Clovis.

“In total, there were 11 dead and decaying dogs that were located on the property that could be identified as domestic dogs and not coyotes or foxes. Seven of these 11 were freshly dead, as in the past few weeks. There were many, many more bones that were scattered about the property,” Romero wrote. “The smell of ‘death’ was very pungent in the area, and I assumed that the rotting dogs were the cause.”

One female greyhound was in particularly bad shape, wearing a severely embedded collar surrounded with infected tissue. Over several hours the living dogs were loaded into animal control trucks and brought to the city’s animal shelter. The infected greyhound had to be humanely euthanized at a local animal hospital.

“The tissue and hair underneath the collar was green and putrid and the smell was overwhelming. It was obviously rotting and had to be very uncomfortable for the animal,” Romero wrote. “[B]ased on the depth of injury on this dog, the collar had been too tight for months.”

Romero spoke with Davis, who arrived on scene while the search warrant was being served.

“He was agitated, and I walked up to him and explained to him why I was there, and that I was taking his dogs based on the conditions they were in now,” she wrote. “He argued that [...] ‘none of them starved to death’. I advised him that I don’t know why the dogs were dead, but that I was very concerned that the dogs were in fact, dead.”

in 2009 Romero had seized dogs from Davis at the same property due to cruelty, according to the arrest affidavit. Romero seized nine of 39 dogs, of which most were greyhound mixes “that Davis claimed he used to hunt coyotes.” Of those nine dogs, seven “were awarded” to Romero in a court hearing, she wrote, while Davis “got his two stud dogs back” and “was also told to come into compliance with getting the animals vaccinated against rabies and to properly feed the thinner ones.”

After several weeks “the dogs looked good,” Romero wrote, but she hadn’t been back out there again for about 10 years, when an individual from the state livestock board contacted her Dec. 6 alerting her to a situation “very similar to the conditions the dogs were in previously.”

A representative of the public defender officer said on Tuesday that Davis would be seeking a private attorney, yet to be declared. Attempts Tuesday to contact Davis were unsuccessful. He is scheduled for a preliminary examination April 26 in magistrate court.