"Over a two-year period, Ahoskie Animal Hospital released 50 animals to PETA. Upon learning of the charges, Dr. Patrick Proctor, DVM was particularly upset over the loss of a mom and her two kittens (he had recently turned the cats over to Hinkle and Cook). “These were just kittens we were trying to find homes for,” said Proctor. “PETA said they would do that, but these cats never made it out of the county.” Dr. Proctor went on to vow that “PETA will never pick up another animal from my practice.”
This is what’s interesting about Dr. Proctor’s testimony:
While the the incident that sparked the infamous court case happened in 2005, the story itself started all the way back in 2000, when a North Carolina police officer contacted PETA having witnessed a dog at the Bertie County, NC, pound dying in his flooded outdoor enclosure, and another dog eating the mummified remains of a cat.
PETA became both physically and financially involved at the Bertie County pound, and with three other impoverished NC pounds that were using dilapidated gas chambers and heart-stick and firearm euthanasia to dispose of unwanted shelter animals. PETA poured over $300,000 into the project, building new animal housing from the ground up, and working with shelter staff to improve the care of the animals who were unlucky enough to find their way into rural NC shelters. PETA also contracted a local veterinarian to go to one of the pounds, the pound in Hertford County, to humanely euthanize the animals who wouldn’t be offered for adoption and who would otherwise be crammed into a windowless box and suffocated. The local veterinarian that PETA contracted to euthanize animals for them in Hertford County was Dr. Patrick Proctor, DVM. He would later ask a PETA CAP volunteer to remove unwanted animals from his private veterinary practice, and testify that he was “shocked” and “surprised” that the CAP volunteers euthanized them in their van.
The remaining three pounds didn’t want to work with veterinarians, and entered into agreements with PETA that PETA would send staff to their shelters every Wednesday to euthanize their unwanted animals in their van, and remove their remains to Virginia for cremation. These arrangements were carried out for years before the infamous “dumpster” incident occurred.
The Center for Consumer Freedom and Nathan Winograd both have gotten a lot of mileage out of this incident, each lamenting about Dr. Proctor’s heartrending testimony and how he claimed that he had no idea that the PETA CAP volunteers would euthanize the three animals he told them to remove from his office that day. Yet, neither the CCF of Nathan Winograd mention that the jury found the PETA CAP volunteer not guilty of obtaining the animals under false pretenses because the reality was that no one could know better that PETA euthanized the North Carolina animals they couldn’t find homes for than Dr. Proctor. Dr. Proctor euthanized 1,227 animals who PETA wouldn’t be able to find homes for, and was paid by PETA over $10,000 to do it. Who could possibly know better of PETA’s North Carolina protocol than they man they paid to implement it over the span of several years?
There are other things the CCF and Nathan Winograd omit about the testimony at the trial, like how the defense and the prosecution couldn’t agree on which employee had actually relinquished the animals to the PETA volunteer, and how the prosecution’s witness admitted upon cross-examination that while she thought that the animals might be found homes, she was never actually told they would be. She admitted to knowing that the animals might be euthanized, proving that no promises were ever made.
The CCF and Nathan Winograd neglect to mention that when Dr. Proctor was subpoenaed to provide time cards for the employees who were working the day of the incident, he produced an altered time card for one of the prosecution’s key witnesses. Without the altered time card, there was no evidence that one of the key prosecution witnesses was even there during the incident to witness the events.
There’s more to the story, folks. Learn the rest of it here:
