“The death of my wonderful husband, my best friend of forty years, should spark a discussion by all concerned citizens, and it should be about the expectation of protecting animals and ensuring public safety.” – Kathryn Bellis.
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Kathryn Barry Bellis and her husband Jon, residents of Vermont and Connecticut, were driving on Vermont Route 4 on the night of July 31, 2015, when their car struck and killed a pet bull. Jon, 62, was killed. She survived.
The road was well-lit and busy, and bystanders said Bellis was driving between 35 and 40 miles per hour, according to the police. The bull was standing in the roadway The owner of the bull, Craig Mosher, an excavator in Killington, has been indicted on criminal charges of involuntary manslaughter. He faces up to 15 years in prison.
Yesterday, Kathryn Bellis wrote to me about a legal document in Vermont called the “State’s Notice Of Intent To Offer Evidence Of Other Crimes, Wrongs, Acts.” It is a public document, available through the Rutland State’s Attorney’s office, the first and most comprehensive listing of the evidence that provided the basis for the state’s charges against Mosher. Criminal charges are rare, if not unprecedented in an animal accident incident, the charges sent shock waves through farming communities all over the county.
Some of this information was reported in several Vermont newspapers last week and I wrote about it.
Some of it is new to me.
It is a sobering and damning document, it lists the seven different times – at least – that police were called to respond to reports of Craig Mosher’s bull being out or near Route 4, a major state and heavily trafficked highway just yards away from his home and the pasture where his bulls, sheep and donkeys were kept between two-and-four strand barbed wire and wooden posts.
The seventh and last report came just prior to the accident that killed the bull and Jon Bellis on July 31, 2015.
That night, a milk truck driver told police he nearly crashed his truck slamming on the brakes to avoid hitting the Scottish Highlander Bull named Big Red shortly before the accident. He knew where the bull lived and went to knock on Mosher’s door and tell him the bull was on the lawn of a motel on Route 4.
The truck driver told police that Mosher did not come out to look for the bull, so he called the police. Later, Mosher told the police he didn’t believe the driver’s report was accurate.
Bellis was found semi-conscious in his car, which swerved off the road and hit a tree. Blood was coming out of his ears and he never regained consciousness, he died of a traumatic head injury, said police.
“I have probable cause to believe that Mosher was then and there a person who committed the offense of manslaughter by not making a reasonable effort to locate the loose bull when he was advised it was out its pasture,” swore the investigating officer, a Vermont State Trooper.
The police were by now familiar with the bull and his escapes. The statement of intent paints a picture of an animal owner who was so used to his animal escaping, he didn’t consider it a threat or an emergency.
According to the statement of intent, on May 19,2013, Vermont State Trooper Jason Johnson was dispatched to Route 4 near the Val Roc motel, after a report of a large animal in the roadway. Johnson found a large “cow” walking into the roadway. Before the cow was led away, he walked in and out of the roadway several times.
On June 20,2015, Trooper Seth Richardson was sent to Route 4 and Hadley Hill Road because of reports of a bull on the roadway. Before he arrived, he was told the owner of the bull had come and brought him back to his pasture.
On June 23, 2015, Trooper Robert Rider was sent to Route 4 in response to a report of a bull in the roadway. By the time he arrived, the bull had been secured and returned to his pasture.
On July 26, 2015, Windsor County Deputy Sheriff Tyler Trombley was on patrol and was informed by a passerby that Mosher’s bull was once again out of the pasture. He arrived to find Mosher luring the bull back to the pasture. Trombley said Mosher told him “that he knew his bull gets out through the fence.”
On July 30, 2015, State Police Sgt. Christopher Barber was sent to Killington in response to a report of a “large bull standing on Route 4,” it had been called in by a motorist. Barber said he had personally sent troopers to deal with the same bull at least three times prior to that call. He could not locate Mosher, and searched the area. He couldn’t find the bull.
On July 32, at 21:58, Trooper Robert Rider was against dispatched to Route 4 following a report that the bull was in the roadway. En route to the scene, he was notified (at 22:13) that a motorist had hit the bull in the roadway and was likely killed upon impact. When Rider spoke to Mosher, according to his report, “defendant admitted that the milk truck driver woke up him and told him that his bull had been in the roadway and was down on the lawn of the Val Roc motel. Defendant said that he did not look for the bull there, but rather only on his property assuming that the milk driver was wrong. Defendant said he did not see his bull so he went back inside his house and fell asleep.”
I was familiar with some of this information, but it was jarring to see the amount of detailed evidence in the statement of intent, given to defendants in criminal cases. Involuntary manslaughter is a homicide charge, it applies when extreme negligence or recklessness unintentionally leads to a death.
I drove to Mosher’s property earlier this week and saw his fences, they are good and expensive fences, fences of someone who cares about animals.
Police walked the fence lines with him after the accident and saw that an apple tree limb had been pulled down (by a bull, surely) and caught between the barbed wire strands and pulled the top wire up. leaving a 6 ft. opening. Mosher was not aware of the breach until he walked with the troopers to survey the fence line, according to the troopers.
Mosher has not responded publicly to these charges, and I have not spoken with him. There is little doubt his bull escaped many times near a busy highway, and that he was well aware of these escapes. It is not clear what, if anything, he did, to stop the escapes or ensure the safety of the animal or the people on the road.
Many farmers (Mosher is not a farmer, I ought to point out again) have experienced repeated animal escapes, but almost all say they respond immediately and do everything they can to bring the animals back inside quickly. It is not always possible.
Farm fences often extend over wide areas, and some animals like cow are often drawn to exploring the outer boundaries. Few, if any farmers, can patrol their fences every day or anticipate or even see trouble when it occurs, as in a lightning storm. Sometimes, kids driving cars break through the fences, accidentally or on purpose.
For animal owners, the issue is equally fraught. It is not possible that a dog or cat will never in its lifetime find a way to get outside and run into a road.
Thus, the case has enormous implications for farmers and animal owners, issues the state or the prosecuting attorney so far has yet to acknowledge or discuss.
In my own writing and traveling and reporting, I have learned how much pressure farmers and many animal owners are now under, and for many reasons, from economic difficulties to the growing and increasingly expensive and irrational harassment of some authorities and the animal rights movement.
I don’t blame any farmer for being afraid that every time a cow gets through a fence – an inevitable part of farm and rural life – it may result in a criminal indictment. It is unfortunate that no one in the state government or prosecutor’s office has deigned to address these concerns.
Since World War II, there has been a vast migration from rural areas into cities, and few urbanites or suburbanites, or people in authority anywhere know much any longer about farming or the real lives of farm animals.
This has caused enormous suffering and confusion, not only to farmers, but to animal owners – from carriage drivers to pony ride operators to elephant trainers in the circus – facing new kinds of charges of abuse, cruelty and neglect, many of them without foundation.
If animal accidents are criminalized, some farmers will no longer let their animals graze freely, some land owners will not lease their land to farmers, as they now do, many insurance companies will raise their rates or cancel their policies, and lawyers and prosecutors will explore a whole new realm of prosecution and threat, and liability.
Two farmers in Vermont have already messaged me to say they are now euthanizing good milk cows who are especially curious and escape-prone, rather than risk arrest and prosecution. They are not waiting for the prosecutor to get around to explaining her decision, they are having their own conversations.
It is important to know that no jail time or threats can ever make any farm with animals escape-proof, a hundred things can destroy fences, knock out electric charges or pry wires apart. There is not a small or family farmer anywhere with livestock who has not had an animal escape. “What is the definition now?”, one farmer asked me at Mosher’s first court hearing, “what is “extreme neglect?” If a cow gets out three times, can you go to jail? Now, before I go get my cow, they tell me to call a lawyer.”
Still, extreme neglect resulting in death is a profoundly serious thing, can it really be dismissed as just another accident?
This question of extreme neglect resulting in death is the legal issue at the heart of this issue. It has not, traditionally, been applied to animal escapes. Does it apply to a dog who runs into the street and triggers a serious or fatal accident?
Farmers are deeply concerned about the criminal charges against Mosher, but I also know few farmers (I am not a farmer, but I include myself in this) who would not immediately go outside to get an escaped animal back onto his property and take whatever steps to repair fences that might be damaged.
Friday, I exchanged message with Kathryn Bellis, Jon Bellis’s widow, and I believe she is aware of the many deep and troubling issues this awful case raises. Her perspective is poignant.
“If my beloved golden, Leo, was found on Route 4 just once,” she wrote me, “I would make sure it never happened again. On July 31, 2015, at 10:13 p.m., the State Police received its seventh report of a bull standing on Route 4. Unlike previous calls, this one involved a fatality.”
She said she understood that Mosher did not search for the bull that night, as the police also reported.
“This is not,” she wrote, “what a Vermont farmer or good neighbor would do. The death of my wonderful husband, my best friend of forty years, should spark a discussion by all concerned citizens and it should be about the expectation of protecting animals, and ensuring public safety.”
I’ve heard from a number of people in Killington who worked near the Mosher property and they say his bull was often out on the road. In the police affidavits, Mosher said the bull usually ended up hanging around the apple tree on his property, he didn’t believe reports that Big Red was out on the highway by the motel, he thought people were mistaken, and were wrongly using the motel as a point of reference.
I appreciate the exchange with Ms. Bellis. It is not for me to determine the guilt or innocence of Craig Mosher, that is now for the courts to decide, not Facebook. The discussion she calls for is something else.
I can hardly imagine Kathryn Bellis’s suffering and loss, and she is more than entitled to raise whatever questions she wants about the events that led to her husband’s very tragic death.
She is correct in pleading for a broader discussion of responsibility and animal safety, beyond just the accident. I would argue that the discussion also ought to include the rights and well-being of farmers and of people who choose to live and work with animals.
But that conversation has not yet happened, it is not likely to happen in a criminal court. In the meantime, farmers and animals are left to grapple with a complex and urgent issue by themselves. What constitutes n neglect, what is the simple nature of life and fate?
I talked to several lawyers this week who say criminal charges in an animal accident case are unprecedented.
They say these charges do threaten to criminalize farming and pet ownership, depending on what precedent is set. One, a New York law professor who studies involuntary manslaughter cases, said if extreme negligence is the benchmark for prosecution, that would limit the impact beyond this case.
“If your dog or donkey got out and you immediately responded and tried to get it back, that would not be extreme neglect,” she said. But what, I asked, if you aren’t even home? “Then you are probably out of luck,” she said.
“But if every animal escape raises the specter of a criminal investigation,” she added, “that will have an enormous impact on anyone who lives or works with an animal.” These cases, she said, have always been considered acts of nature, or acts of God. There has never been the idea of jail as a punishment, the cases have all been tried in civil courts.
Kathryn Bellis is entitled to a discussion of the circumstances that resulted in the death of her husband and about how this kind of tragedy be prevented in the future, for the sake of animals as well as people.
A valuable statement of intent from state authorities would be to state their intention of having an open and thoughtful discussion about how farmers can survive in an ever-more-difficult environment and how we can ensure that animals remain in our world.
Kathryn Bellis is entitled to justice and accountability.
Farmers and animal lovers are entitled to a discussion about what this case means for them and the animals they live and work with.
We live in a polarized, black-and-white world, filled with outrage and absolutes. They call it oppositional thinking, it means perpetual conflict, it seems to be poisoning our political system.
It is perhaps hoping for a miracle, even in Vermont, to think of an open, meaningful consideration about the issues this case has raised. If I’ve ever heard of an issue that cries out for listening and thinking and empathizing, this is it. Perhaps Vermont can make some positive history in the tangled and hostile morass of animal politics.
People deserve it, so do the animals.
