ANIMAL
PEOPLE
is
the
leading
independent
newspaper
providing
original
investigative
coverage
of
animal
protection
worldwide.
Founded
in
1992, ANIMAL PEOPLE has
no
alignment
or
affiliation
with
any
other
entity.
NAIROBI––Nairobi police fired teargas to disperse demonstrators
on May 18, 2005, and Masai leader Ben Koisaba threatened to “mobilize
Masai to invade Delamere ranches in Nakuru to press for the re-arrest
and prosecution” of Tom Gilbert Patrick Cholmon-deley, 37, a day
after Philip Murgor, Kenya Director of Public Prosecution, dropped a murder
charge filed against Cholmondeley on April 28 for killing Kenya Wildlife
Service ranger Samson ole Sisina with one of a volley of five shots fired
on April 19.
Cholmondeley, an honorary KWS game ranger himself, claimed Sisina shot
first, and said he had mistaken Sisina for a bandit, as Sisina led an
undercover KWS raid on an illegal wildlife slaughterhouse at one of the
Cholmondeley family ranches. Cholmon-deley remained under investigation
in connection with the slaughterhouse.
Cholmondeley’s grandfather Hugh Cholmondeley, the third Baron Delamere,
visited Kenya to hunt in 1895, decided to emigrate from Britain to raise
cattle, and established the family land and livestock empire that Tom
Cholmondeley now directs.
The Sisina slaying followed the late March murder of a Swaziland ranger
identified only as Mandla.
“Poachers encountered by the off-duty ranger from the Hlane Royal
Game Park were filling their truck with dozens of carcasses of impala,
warthog and other animals shot at a remote part of the park,” wrote
James Hall of the Inter Press Service. “They shot the ranger also,
whose body lay undetected for two days until other park workers happened
across him. National political figures kept quiet about the killing, but
Big Game Parks,” the agency that runs the Swaziland wildlife reserves,
“posted a large reward for information leading to the killers’
capture.”
South African National SPCA inspector Roland Fivaz encountered threats
of violence on May 31 while trying to arrest four male students at the
Edgewood campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal for allegedly killing
a cat in a microwave oven two weeks earlier. The arrests “were prevented
by a mob of students who protested against the arrest of their peers.
Fivaz was forced to leave,” wrote Bhavna Sookha of the Durban Daily
News.
Fivaz said witnesses had received death threats, and that he received
a telephoned death threat that evening.
“The case will now be handed over to the police, who will follow
up on the information I have received,” Fivaz told Sookha.
Addressing a comparable case of menacing an animal law enforcement officer,
Palm Beach Circuit Judge Jack Cook on May 27 sentenced Chu Luu Linville,
57, of Loxahatchee, Florida, to serve 50 months in prison followed by
10 years on probation.
“Linville was convicted in March of solicitation to commit first-degree
murder,” explained Palm Beach Post staff writer Larry Keller. “A
jury concluded that she tried to hire an undercover sheriff’s deputy
to kill animal care and control officer Tammie Crawford in October 2003.
Linville even drew a map showing the canal where she wanted Crawford’s
body dumped so it would be eaten by alligators. “Linville has a
long history of skirmishes with animal care and control officers, including
Crawford,” wrote Keller, “who have cited her numerous times
for animal neglect and for letting animals run loose.”
