Charges Filed Friday by Prosecutor on Man for Beating Birthday Party Pony to Death with a Baseball Bat
August 7th, 2009 by Joe Burgess
Prosecuting attorney Thomas Deen Friday filed formal charges against Benjamin Briney for aggravated cruelty to animals in the Drew County Circuit Court.
Briney is believed to be the first person in Arkansas to be charged with the newly revised law, intended to add more severe penalties to persons who are cruel to dogs, cats, and horses.
Deen also said in an interview that the owner of the horse will not be charged in the horse’s death, since the owner instructed Briney to “put it down”, which implies using a humane method of killing the animal. “The owner did not intend for Briney to torture the animal in any way,” according to Deen.
Reports indicate the there were more strikes delivered to the animal than were originally believed.
Briney’s bond is set at $25,000
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Posted August 5, 2009
According to Drew County Sheriff Mark Gober, Benjamin Briney, age 20 of Monticello, has been arrested and charged with aggravated animal cruelty, after he allegedly beat a Shetland pony to death with a baseball bat, early Saturday.
The small horse had been loaned to a family in the Countryview Road area, to be used for children to ride and play with at a child’s birthday party in mid-July. The horse had remained at the family’s residence since that time, and had appearantly been attacked by other animals, who caused injury to the horse’s ears.
A veternarian had been called to see the pony, and had given it shots, and left ointment to be used to treat it’s ears. Actually, Briney had helped care for the pony during the process. The vet still was not sure if the pony’s ears would have to be amputated.
The owner of the horse, Peggy Trantham, told Briney to “get rid of” the horse. When he returned, Trantham told authorities that Briney told her that he had killed it by beating it in the head with a baseball bat.
The investigation will continue to determine if the owner will face charges for any potential involvment in the case.
The sheriff’s dept. was told about the incident by a concerned citizen.
An Arkansas law had just gone into effect prohibiting ”aggravated animal cruelty” , and making the crime a class D felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and up to a $5,000 fine, according to Sheriff Gober.
Briney is incarcerated at the Drew County Detention Facility, and is being held on a $25,000 bond, which was set by District Judge Ken Harper.
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Briney was told to get rid of the animal, He was not told to kill the animal that was his choice. Has anyone ever considered his intellectual level. I am almost certain that he is incompetent to stand trial.
I suspect that the reason she did not call the vet for humane euthanasia was because the injuries were not life threatening. Apparently, this POS loaned the pony to a family for a birthday party and never returned to pick it up, until it got injured. Then she did not want to deal with having to put ointment on the critter’s ear. I hope both she and the 20 y/o thug get prosecuted to the fullest extent of this new law!
I get so tired of the “one or the other” non-argument that invariably erupts in any discussion on animal cruelty. That is, “if you are outraged about animal cruelty, then you don’t care about humans”. How absurd! That’s like saying if you support cancer research, then you value cancer patients more than heart patients or diabetics!
Unknown and Renee, if you have such a complete lack of empathy for animals, because you feel it is essential for loving mankind, just remember: Cruelty to animals is often a precursor to violence against humans. To allow animal cruelty to occur without consenquences diminishes our humanity and enables the most base among us to progress to violence against humans.
I agree with Lucas and some of the other people. Only a bunch of animal loveing nuts would pick an animal over human life. just because they said he beat the horse to doesn’t mean he was beaten repeatedly. He may have just hit the horse one time. What if you kid, bother , father made a dumb mistake like this would you feel the same No and don’t lie and say yes. Just because you kill an animal doesn’t mean that you are going to be a serial killer. Show me one boy that has never killed a defenseless animal and I will apologize for all my remarks. I am sorry but it is crazEy liberal people like yourself that got this country screwed up!!!!
two cents I believe that the bible say no flesh and blood shall enter into heaven, so unless your animals have souls an ask jesus Christ to save them I don’t believe animals will be in heaven crapping on the streets of gold. let me say this the guy should recieve some punishment but when you put an animals life over a humans that is not logical. If this man does have kids you his children do go with out a father for killing an animal. If people think this than they are as cruel as he his.
I am so sick & tired of hearing Jesus quoted as an excuse for cruelty, stupidity and just plain meanness! If there are no animals in heaven, I sure don’t want to go there.
Sounds to me like this guy has been tried and convicted before the facts have been presented. I don’t know what happened in this case and I doubt many people do but it sounds like a good old fashion lynch mob in the making here.
Okay….it is easy to go after the gentlman that actually “took care” of the animal. In my opinion, the OWNER should have taken care of doing it themselves…..by putting the animal down via a vetenarian……let’s hold the OWNER responsible for more than it seems we are.
I would be willing to say this young man has a low IQ, no remorse, no conscious, no empathy for anyone or thing. To people that have this it is very hard to understand how someone could not. A simple command telling him to get rid of it, probably in his mind is to kill it the best way he knows how. This by no means makes it right.
Like someone else said, this is not the first CRIME this man has committed, and bottom line, I don’t think having compassion and feelings for animals in no way puts that animals life above a humans. I don’t think God would by any means want us to beat a pony to death.
NO one should ever be abused not even an animal. UGH…this just makes me SICK!! If there was a death penalty, people in favor of abusing animals should get it!!
Someone should take him out and beat him in the head. There are more humane ways to kill an animal!
Unknown: First things first-LEARN GRAMMAR! It might help if you calm down before you type. Maybe then you will make some sense. Why throw GOD into something like this. It is a case of animal cruelty. Just because these two people should be punished does not mean someone is choosing animal life over human life.
Your “killing a defenseless animal” remark must refer to hunting. There is a big difference in killing an animal to “get rid of it” and doing so to feed your family. You speak of this like we have another “iceman” running around. If you don’t know who that is, I am sure your handy dandy GOOGLE search engine will help you.
I am not a liberal (sorry), and this is a GREAT country you are living in! Think of that when you have clean running water to bathe in, plenty of food on your table, clean streets, and a nice quiet place to rest your head! I hope this message leaves you feeling like you have mud on your face, and the hopes of taking a few english lessons.
Sincerely,
your animal lover
To “Mr. Unknown”, I will be glad to show someone as uneducated as you several people who have never killed or blugeoned to death an innocent animal. I believe that you and “Renee” have no regard for life in general. If the perpetrator has children, then maybe they will be better off if he is in jail instead of having the opportunity to do the same to them. If I am “crazy and liberal”, simply because I value human life, then so be it. And I would be very careful using scripture to validate your points. God may not approve of using His Word to justify such a horrible act.
This man should be given the maximum punishment under the law (which probably still isn’t harsh enough.) How could a person do that to a helpless animal?
To “unknown”: I don’t care what you believe about souls or God or whatnot. The fact is that animals feel pain and terror just as much as people do. People who don’t care about inflicting pain are sick and disturbed, no matter whether they are inflicting that pain on an animal or human.
I find it very disturbing that you think all young boys kill helpless animals. Open your eyes a little. Just because that’s what YOU may have experienced/done, does not mean that EVERYONE does that.
Believe it or not, many young boys understand what pain and cruelty is and show compassion towards other creatures.
I want to know where in the article it said that they are going to kill the man?
What are you people talking about “pick[ing] an animal over human life.”??
I don’t think anyone is saying the man should be killed for killing the pony. They’re just saying since he committed a crime, he should have to pay for it.
Ie, go to jail, pay a fine. It’s not okay that he killed an animal like that. It’s one thing to kill it quickly, and so it doesn’t feel pain. It’s another to beat it’s brains out (literally), as it dies a slow and extremely painful and terrifying death.
It makes me really sad and disconcerted when people have no compassion for a living life, even if it’s “just an animal”.
Dianah11 – Maybe you should try actually reading the story so that you do know the facts. That way when you put forth your sweeping generalizations of “lynch mob” mentality, you might actually have a leg to stand on. The facts are plentiful and rather simple to comprehend so I’m sure you can struggle through them if you put some effort into them. But just in case, let me present them to you as simply as I can:
Horse gets sick. Owner doesn’t want to pay vet bill. Owner tells stupid cretin to get rid of horse. Stupid cretin takes a baseball and smashes it into horse’s head. Stupid cretin brags about it and gets caught. End of story. No lynch mob, just simple justice.
You know, it really truly frightens me that there are people walking on this planet who actually believe some of the things I see written above. This story is so not about putting a animal’s life before a human. There is no human life in peril here. This is about cruel stupid people who get a thrill from killing a defenseless animal and the responsibility of pet owner to treat their animal’s humanely.
Unfortunately, it is now also about cruel stupid people who get a thrill from supporting other cruel stupid people who kill defenseless animals.
Very scary indeed.
Why are “Unknown” and “Renee” defending the brainless wonder who beat a pony to death? Just such an attitude is why we had to have a law to punish such vile acts. Punishing an idiot who would bash a pony’s brains out with a baseball bat is not putting an animal over a human. Anybody’d who’d do that is not quite human and society needs to be protected from him. Also, “Unknown” says all kids kill animals. Excuuuse me? What kind of people does “Unknown” befriend? A child who enjoys the agonized screams of an animal in pain has a major problem, and an adult who doesn’t teach a child that it’s wrong and try to instill some sympathy for a helpless animal is a very poor parent, indeed.
I was raised on a farm and my brothers and father were all hunters. We had horses, dogs, cats, cows, chickens…all the usual farm animals. Never, ever, EVER were we allowed to mistreat animals. We had to stay in the house while Daddy killed the hogs for butchering. Sometimes he’d leave the house, head to the pen with his 22 and come back to psych himself up for the dreaded task. It was necessary to feed the family, but there was no joy in it. If the men shot a deer and didn’t kill it outright, they would track and trail it. It bothered them that it might be out there somewhere hurt.
As for the owner…I happen to know the brain bashing idiot who did this. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that there’s something missing upstairs. I wouldn’t leave a frog in his care, much less anything of a higher species. What did she think was going to happen when she told him to “get rid of it?” It was her duty to see that it was humanely put down, or was she afraid that a decent vet would refuse to kill an animal that just needed a little TLC. Somebody in this county would have taken the pony and given it a good home.
Let’s put this character away before he combines his love of oozing brain matter with his mistreatment of humans.
As for “Unknown” saying I’d feel differently if it was my son, husband or father who had done this…I tell you how I’d feel. I wouldn’t sleep a wink with him in the house… I’d be scared to death of what he’d do next.
OK, I think the owner needs to be investigated a little more… who gives a pony to a 20 year old to be put down???
I am glad to hear that he will be tried under these harsher laws for abuse that Arkansas just put into act. Animal cruelty like this really needs to be punished. If he could do this to an animal, what says he couldn’t do it to a person too? Killing and torturing animals in horrible ways like this is a proven stepping stone to abuse and killing humans.
Hope to hear the update soon.
One writer said basically that everyone was jumping the gun, convicting the brain basher before all the facts were in. According to the Democrat/Gazette, he got caught because he told someone what he’d done. This person checked, and sure enough, there was the pony. I guess he didn’t have sense enough to know that most of society would be appalled, not impressed with his physical prowess. And never occurred to him that it was illegal. After all, it was “only a little pony that rode little kids around”….nothing important. Still say the owner shares a huge responsibility in this…
Unknown one, I can give you a list of many boys and men that have never killed an animal ever. I can give you a list of numerous serial killers that always killed animals in violent ways before moving up the food chain, but killers aside, this was a senseless act. Renee, Adam had nothing to do with it nor did God. After all humans were last, animals came first. So your God must have loved them just as much as his humans. Dominion perhaps but what I have read in the past, no where does it say “beat the pony’s brains out”. For the “Liberal” comment, they have not ruined life for you or anyone. Last I checked a Democrat was running the government right after a Republican left it in shambles. Oh and by the way, I am a REPUBLICAN!
Is the guy that did this being executed? Where are you getting choosing an animal over a human? This makes me sick at my stomach. If someone can slowly beat an animal to death what else could he kill. As far as I’m concerned the owner should have some liability. Why not just put it to sleep. She knew she was asking for the animal to be killed.
RENEE , LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING, BRINEY ‘S NOT MUCH OF A HUMAN TO HAVE DID WHAT HE DID, I GUESS YOU DONT HAVE A HEART THO. PPL LIKE YOU MAKE ME SICK…
AMEN MARIE….WELL SAID….
WELL IM A ANIMAL LOVER, SOOOOOOOOOOOOO GUESS IM NUTS,YOU PPL MAKE ME SICK.
I LOVE YOU FOR MY BROTHER
Looking at the comments shows me how savage we really are. There is no secret that the man that beat the horse to death should be punished. As to the severity, ony God will determine that at the great white thrown judgment. The thing that really bothers me is how quickly we will jump up and say “An eye for an eye”. Jesus taught us to turn the other cheek. If we choose to deal with him in the same manner as this man disposed of the horse then we are no better than he was. We need to pray for people like that and let the law prevail and in the end let God judge him. We have already tried and convicted him by our words and due process will not enter in. We don’t need to create a lynch mob to go get him, or become vigilanties to seek out and defend the horse that has already been put down (even though it was horrific). As concerned citizens we have done almost all we can do by letting those who read these posts and have an opportunity to implement stiffer penalties under the law, understand the magnitude of this situation and how strongly we feel about the atrocity that was commited. I agree that this crime takes the cake, however we can’t sit at the moral judgment seat of man; that is God’s job. All we can do is spread the Good News of Jesus Christ, and restore someone in the spirit of meekness after he has fallen from grace. God’s mercies are for us all. God bless each of you.
Minister’s comment is well stated. This has gotten ridiculous.
As usually happens, when an event happens that brings out as much emotion as this topic does, around the time that the comments reach the 60 point, there tends to be a lot of repetition, and the “conversation” turns away from the original topic, and seems to focus more on other comments.
I thank everyone for their opinions, and will be closing this comment section down.
If there are further developments, the section will likely be re-opened at a later time.
Thanks again.
Joe Burgess,
MonticelloLive.com