SAN BERNARDINO, Cailf.–– Gamecock expert Grady Coker, M.D., contended in a December letter to ANIMAL PEOPLE that cockfighting isn’t associated with violent crime, but the gunfire erupting on January 23 at an illegal cockfight in San Bernardino, California, told a different story.
Seven people were hurt, “including a toddler and an 11-year-old,” according to police, who said they found bloody roosters, syringes, and illegal steroids at the scene. Arrested at another site where gamecocks were also found were Robert Elizarraraz, 23; Sergio Villarruel, 19; Salvador Ochoa, 18; and an unidentified 17-year-old.
“There apparently was a dispute during the event, and several suspects were asked to leave,” said police sergeant Mike Blechinger. “They did leave, but returned with guns and [allegedly] started shooting into the crowd.”
The shooting came a year less a day after Jesus Brambila, 29, of Yakima, Washington, was apparently accidentally killed as he and about a dozen other men including his three brothers allegedly robbed an illegal cockfight in Sunnyside, Washington. Yakima County sheriff’s detective Robert Weedin theorized that another robber’s shotgun was inadvertantly discharged.
Between the Washington and California shootings, there were others. James Cox, 36, of Williamsburg, Kentucky, was arrested for allegedly shooting Curtis Lawson Jr., 36, in the head with a shotgun during a July 12 dispute over the proceeds from the sale of a gamecock by the victim’s brother, Eddie Wayne Lawson, 37. Police said Cox and both Lawsons claimed shares in the deal. Curtis Lawson reportedly survived.
On August 31, 1998, Miami-Dade county police visiting an illegal cockfighting arena in response to a tip found murder victims Eduardo Yanes, 53; Rene Vasquez, 33; and a third man, 33, whose identity was withheld.
Cocker off Death Row
Cockfighting-related homicide was also spotlighted in January 1999 when Missouri governor Mel Carnahan commuted to life in prison the death sentence of triple killer Darrell J. Mease, 52, at request of Pope John Paul II. Mease was to have been executed on January 27, coinciding with the Pope’s recent visit to St. Louis. Mease was convicted of shotgunning his former employer, alleged methamphetamine maker and cockpit operator Lloyd Lawrence, 69; Lawrence’s wife Frankie, 56; and their paraplegic grandson William, 19. Police said Lawrence had accused Mease of stealing methamphetamine.
Alleged cockfighting violence even spilled into the Oklahoma state legislature in January, when according to representative Charles Gray (D-Oklahoma City), Oklahoma Game Breeders Association member Walt Roberts “told me that if I filed a bill to ban cockfighting, he’d have 4,000 to 5,000 people come to the state capitol and work me over. I don’t take kindly to being threatened,” Gray explained to Mick Hinton of the Daily Oklahoman. “Roberts is still mad because some of us didn’t support him enough” in an unsuccessful race for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in November 1998. “So I included in the bill some other things that Roberts likes, like rodeos and hunting, and I like them too,” Gray continued.
Roberts denied threatening Gray––and got what he wanted, when the breadth of the Gray bill convinced Oklahoma house criminal justice committee chair Bill Paulk to table it without consideration. Cockfighting has been legal in Oklahoma since 1963, but a Daily Oklahoman poll of 750 residents found in early January that 54% were unaware it is legal, 65% would vote to outlaw it, 30% would favor it, and only 6% would actually attend a cockfight.
In cockfighting mythology, disputes over attempts to rig fights to win illegal bets are the major form of associated crime, but illegal drugs turn up so often in cockfighting raids that related drug charges may be prosecuted more often than cockfighting itself. In January 1998, for instance, St. Augustine police reportedly didn’t bother to file a cockfighting charge against brothers Mark Damon Alters, 18, and Shawn William Arthur, 24, after finding 75 gamecocks, 20 hens, and a case of cockfighting paraphernalia in their possession, because they charged the brothers with far weightier charges pertaining to allegedly possessing, cultivating, and attempting to sell marijuana and LSD.
Follow the money
Heavier charges than pertain to cockfighting were also reportedly pending against William Donald Nichols, 60, after a police raid on September 21, 1998 on the premises where he lived near Portland, Oregon, found at least 400 alleged gamecocks among a flock of 1,500 poultry he had in two barns near Portland, Oregon.
Also allegedly found were amphetamines, counterfeit cash, counterfeiting equipment, and seven firearms, which Nichols as an ex-convict was not allowed to keep. Nichols in 1978 was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1978 for offering an undercover Multnomah County sheriff’s deputy $2,500 to kill a building contractor.
The raid came after the arrest of Virginia Anne Homan, 51, for alleged counterfeiting led police to arrest Diane R. Shaw, a.k.a. Diane R. Mooso, 43, and Scott E. Barnes, 27, for alleged forgery, possession of counterfeit currency, possession of illegal drugs, and being fugitives from justice. Shaw/Mooso reportedly told federal agents that Nichols asked her to produce counterfeit money for him to wager on cockfights.
The first known conviction of cockfighters for felony cruelty came on January 6, 1999 in Sacramento, California, when a Superior Court jury convicted Modesto Ruiz Baniqued, 65, of three felonies and four related misdemeanors, and convicted Gonzalo Bito, 54, of one felony, in connection with a cockfight raided in July 1997 at which 30 dead and dying roosters were confiscated. A similar charge against Bito’s brother George Bito, 41, was dismissed after the jury deadlocked, and Patrick Zamora, 41, was acquitted.