Martin County Sheriff explains reported animal hoarding case

All right, well let me start chronologically and try to talk my way through what we're dealing with here in the Foxwood subdivision of Martin County. It's been a couple weeks but we got a report of a lady who worked for the postal service who was stealing or collecting cats along her route. The call came in as a theft and as we investigated it we learned that our suspect and kind of victim, and I'll kind of break that down here in a minute, who lives behind us was working around and potentially collecting feral cats. So she didn't steal somebody's pet but she was likely collecting feral cats. Our animal control unit had come to this house in years past and had issued up to 65 citations, civil citations, to this lady for different types of animals that she was confining in her house. At that point code enforcement was involved and helped her mitigate some of the problems she had which was ventilation and not proper care of these animals. That's been 10 years ago. Fast forward to this last week our animal control unit started trying to get in this house to ascertain whether or not animals were being housed improperly and or abused and were unable to do so. They worked throughout the week with our suspect and I'll give you her name. Her name is, hold on one second, her name is Gail J-I-L and I'll spell her last name, I don't know how to pronounce it, G-I-U-S-T-I-N-O, 77 year old female. So they tried to work with Gail for the last week on kind of getting a look at how many animals she had, trying to vet out whether she was collecting cats, kind of knowing some of her backstory that she may be a hoarder. They worked with her but she was not cooperative. In fact, when they would come to the house she would do anything she could to try to stop them from seeing what was going on here. She did surrender several animals to different facilities around Martin County and I'll stop right there. If Gail has come to your facility and surrendered animals we want to know about it because we really don't know how many animals she initially had. But we believe she may have taken up to 20 animals to different facilities around Martin County. Gail wouldn't cooperate with us and so eventually we had to go the criminal route and get a search warrant for the house which was executed today. I think you can smell what we're smelling out here now. That's what our detectives and animal control officers were met with when they went to the house. Extreme stench. This house is not ventilated. It's ventilated now thanks to fire rescue but it's not ventilated and last count from Gail is she believes she has at least 70 cats in there all caged and we're not sure how many dogs yet and we've been in there now for the last two hours. So we believe that there could be north of 70 or 80 animals that are stored in this house behind us. Now these are squalor conditions. It's a nice house, nice neighborhood but the conditions are horrific. We're talking about in some places a foot of animal feces in that house. There is no air conditioning in that house. So when we cracked the door on it earlier today the stench was unreal. The air was stifling hot and thanks to our partners from fire rescue the hazmat team had to come out here and ventilate the house and then help us navigate trying to get these animals out which you're seeing behind me as I'm standing here talking. Let's talk about Gail. Do we want to arrest a 77 year old lady? The answer is absolutely not and let me talk that through real quick. She's 77 years old like I've mentioned twice and if we believe she was truly an animal abuser an animal a person to take advantage of them we would try to bury her under the jail. That's not the case in this case. We truly believe that Gail thinks she's doing the right thing but she's doing it the wrong way and we have arrested her for two misdemeanors and the goal of arresting her was to be able to seize the animals to save them from death and try to get them the help that they need and then to keep her from repossessing animals and then to move her into mental health court so she can get the help that she needs to try to deal with what we've dealt with today and whatever needs she has. Clearly this is a hoarder scenario worst case of animal hoarding that I've seen here in Martin County but we're thankful again that our partners with Fire Rescue, Animal Control and the Humane Society that's working with us have come to help us try to fix the problem save these animals from these squalor conditions and then try to help Gail long term. So with that I'm happy to answer whatever questions but keep in mind that this is active so my animal count we're thinking maybe up to 80 but we're not exactly sure you would think we would know but we're talking about stuff everywhere you can't walk anywhere in the house without running into a cage or trash so I'll kick it to you for questions go ahead. So the question is where will all the animals go initially they're going to go to the Humane Society and thankfully we had a couple weeks to prepare for the Humane Society and then Humane Society will rely on some of the volunteers some of the foster parents to come along beside them and help adopt these animals so it's going to be a big lift for them I mean adding 80-90 animals to their to their already burgeoning count out there is going to be a lift for the Humane Society. So the question is what's the condition of the animals and the answer is we're not sure I just asked that question if you saw me walk over there we're pulling them out one by one and and trying to ascertain exactly how bad they are again we believe Gail was trying to do the right thing but she's not got the right mental capacity to do it right now at this point so she fed them we believe she used flea spray up until the point where she may have injured one of the animals by using it so much but she did do some things right but again a house probably 110 degrees in there when we went in there today no air conditioning no ventilation she never walks pets she never brings them outside of the house so it's they've been confined to that animal jail really for however long she's been hoarding these pets in there yes so the question is when did the investigation begin and it's when a report came that a United States postal worker stole a cat again she didn't steal somebody's pet but it looks like she was gathering feral cats along her postal route and that's what led us to her house the complaint came in in the last two weeks and then that started a process of trying to talk to and then doing our research on how much we've dealt with her in the past and our animal control girls had not dealt with her that much but 10 years ago there was a lot of activity out here well in the last 10 years she has slipped back in her old habits the question is is this the first time the answer is i'm not exactly sure on that we've been here off and on and at least a decade ago we issued 65 citations so yeah yeah is there something yeah so the question is why would it take 10 years to get all of the animals we got the complaint that i'm aware of two weeks ago so we we acted quickly and i was not aware of a 10 year old complaint but but during that time we did vet that out she complied with all the what she was supposed to comply with she does not have central ac in the house so she put window units in all the windows at that time she provided ingress and egress for county code enforcement but we haven't been out here checking on her for the last 10 years and she has progressively just accumulated more stuff those ac units that she put in none of them work and uh there's there's trash they had to clear a path i think they're using the front door now but they couldn't get in the front door initially had to go in the back door yep the question is did she leave her and the answer is yes how we don't know we're talking to fire rescue about like you're standing you can smell a house from here how could she live in that squalor condition without having some kind of health effect we're not sure so we'll have her checked out at the jail so the question is how does the case move forward in the court process we back out a little bit we don't want her to go through the court process we don't want to go to the criminal route we see it for what it is she's a 77 year old lady has some kind of mental deficiency i don't know exactly what that is but has something going on in her life that doesn't allow her to think properly we did not want to go the criminal route but the criminal route was the only thing that would give us a search warrant to come and rescue these poor animals that are behind us and then the criminal route also gives us some teeth as to what takes place next the courts can come and say she can no longer possess an animal they can give us some rights to come and check on it check on the animals in the house and they can make sure that the animals are taken care of and adopted out to other places so the criminal route was the more thoughtful route we talked about baker acting her which if you know what that is that's taking her against her will and getting her some mental triage but the criminal route seemed to be the best route again we don't want a 77 year old lady in jail we only charge her with two counts we could have charged her with 160 counts two counts per animal we're only charging with two counts we don't want her in jail but we want to keep these animals safe and we want to get her the help that she needs the question is how many cats she did she take and the answer is we have no idea i sat there with her just you know we had time earlier and she was recounting to me and uh or a corporal how many cats she had in which room and she was she was very specific like that cat sparrow it just had babies little babies that cat had three babies but they're now adults or a year old so she knows her animals and she knows about them but i didn't ask her and we haven't asked her yet where they all came from so the question the question is what will happen to her in the criminal proceedings what we want to happen is that she doesn't get animals back or she can only have one or two and then we want her to go through the mental health court process to get her some kind of an evaluation and see where she is we're not trying to demonize her if i thought she was abusing these animals on purpose we would try to bury her under the jail that's not the case in this case we believe again she was doing the right thing or the wrong thing for the right reason she was just not doing it properly worker yeah the question is she u.s postal service worker the answer is yes the question is overall health of the animals the answer is i don't know when i walked up the first cat had been taken out and and we don't know we they walked in with body cameras initially quite frankly our animal control was not suited properly to handle that so hazmat came out from fire rescue and let me uh say thank you to them they don't get paid enough to deal with what they're dealing with back there uh so we don't know but as we find out we'll kind of give you a rundown of what we're dealing with in your history with the sheriff's department the question is in my history with the sheriff's office is this the worst case i've seen and i would say it is the worst animal hoarding case that we've seen any other questions anything i so the question is are you referring to the humane society the question is is the humane society calling in other agencies the answer is i don't know um we were quite shocked we're coming out here thinking maybe 15 20 30 cats and we're she's telling us there's upwards of 70 to 80 and then we're not sure how many dogs are some small dogs in there too part of her game playing that she did with us over the last week as she took how many animals she she took 15 different animals and dropped them off at two locations in the last week and then let us know hey i just want you to know that i surrendered all my animals are gone well that's 15 that weren't here today that we would have had to add to our list so there's a lot of animals involved in this and there may be more out there that she did not tell us about they were not aware of the question is are there any deceased animals and the answer is as as of this time i haven't seen it but quite frankly i don't know how i really don't know how squalor conditions again it was 100 plus degrees in there there was zero ventilation in that house until fire rescue started uh opening up windows and running fans through there so question is was she living alone the answer is yes yep so the question is can i describe the hazmat and so yes fire rescue martin county fire rescue has a robust hazmat team the special operations operators and they came right out and were able to assist us they can go in there with ventilators and breathe pure air out of their respirators and not be breathing feces and cat urine so they were able to come in and really save the day for us so kudos to martin county fire rescue for their apparatuses and their training yeah the question is am i surprised i i'm i'm shocked that she's living in there i really don't know how she was able to survive in that house no ac in that house i mean we're talking about a closed up house no windows are open you can smell that house from the road right now but when we came initially that house was completely sealed off and and you couldn't smell anything or there was no ventilation that's why there probably wasn't any the question is was there any reports of strange orders the answer is not that i'm aware of there may have been some but that house was kind of a secluded quiet you know this is a beautiful neighborhood this is a nice area of uh of kind of southwest stewart two and a half acre to five acre lot some of them so nice area we good guys thank you all