NEW HAMPTON — A post on social media eventually led to police charging a local couple with 44 counts each of animal cruelty and one count each of unlicensed sale of pets. The couple voluntarily surrendered all but three animals when confronted by authorities.
Local police arrested Edith Daughen, 28, and Nicholas Torrey, 30, of 25 Clement Road, on Aug. 8. They are free on personal recognizance pending their arraignment in Fourth Circuit Court-District Division-Laconia on Oct. 18.
The couple had claimed to be operating an animal rescue operation but, instead, authorities found dead and starving dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, birds, and reptiles at their home.
“None of them had food and only one had water,” said Detective Joshua Tyrrell of the New Hampton Police Department.
Tyrrell said Daughen had posted a request for help on Facebook, claiming that one of the two horses on the property had fallen in the mud and was unable to get up.
“She had been posting for hours or days,” according to Teresa Paradis of Live and Let Live Farm, a nonprofit rescue center in Chichester which eventually took in a number of the animals from New Hampton.
Paradis said several people had suggested to Daughen that she contact Live and Let Live, but she had not done so.
One of her followers on Facebook went to the house to help and, finding the two horses to be malnourished, contacted the police, according to Tyrrell. New Hampton Police Chief George Huckins, accompanied by a veterinarian with the New Hampshire Department of Agriculture, went to the house to check out the situation on July 26.
Paradis said she got a call from the state veterinarian at 3:30 p.m., saying she was “going to a situation in New Hampton” where two horses would have to be removed immediately, and asking whether Live and Let Live Farm could take them.
When volunteers from Live and Let Live arrived with a trailer stocked with fresh hay, the horse was standing, and “could not get on the trailer fast enough,” Paradis said.
“She was 1 [the lowest on the scale] in body weight,” Paradis said, “and didn’t want to stop eating.”
The second horse was much younger and, while also starving, was better able to cope, Paradis said.
Tyrrell said that, although a three-sided shelter is required by law, those horses had no shelter. “They needed immediate care,” he said.
Bristol
Workers at Live and Let Live Farm rename rescue animals to give them a fresh start, and they gave the older horse the name Bristol after taking Old Bristol Road to get to the location. They named the younger horse LuLoo.
Paradis said that, as they traveled down Interstate 93, they felt the trailer jerk around, and stopped to find that Bristol had collapsed. They had to remove LuLoo from the trailer to try and get Bristol back up on her feet.
Their veterinarian, who was waiting for them when they arrived at Live and Let Live Farm, gave Bristol a painkiller and anti-inflammatory drugs, and braced her up with bales of hay.
“She was bright-eyed, with a strong will to live,” Paradis said, “but she was never able to get up on her feet.”
Bristol’s heartbeat was irregular and she was hypothermic, so the volunteers brought blankets and stayed with her through the night. Around 7:30 a.m., she went from cold to hot and her heartbeat was racing at 130 beats per minute, a likely heart attack. They called the vet back to euthanized her.
LuLoo survived and is being nursed back to health, Paradis said.
In following up on the incident, Paradis said Bristol had a tattoo proving that she had been a racehorse named Foretina. In checking out Daughen’s Facebook postings, Paradis said, “Edith was always posting on social media, and had a photo of Forestina when she arrived there. She was overweight at that time, but Edith told the police that she was thin when she got her.”
She said the staff also discovered that Daughen had created a GoFundMe page the very day she surrendered the horses, asking for money to take in more animals. She advertised as an animal rescue/sanctuary.
“The volunteers and I found her selling snakes, having newborn kittens, and acquiring a baby bird. None of those animals were shown to police,” Paradis said.
Other animals
Tyrrell said police had returned to Clement Road the following day, July 27, and found several cats and dogs, with none of the dogs being licensed or having had rabies shots.
After hearing from Live and Let Live Farm about the ads for animals, police returned again on Aug. 1 and asked to see the other animals.
“We found there were a lot that they hadn’t told us about,” Tyrrell said, including a dead snake and a dead bird. There were hamsters and rabbits, along with the birds, snakes, cats, and dogs.
The state vet was with the police to assess the animals, and the couple agreed to surrender 48 animals in all, keeping three that they said were pets. Live and Let Live Farm ended up with 30 animals, and the New Hampshire Humane Society in Laconia took in the others.
Tyrrell said the reason there were 44 charges when 48 animals were taken from the property was because four were nursing kittens, so the mother cat was taking care of them. The charge of unlicensed sale of pets was connected to the advertising for the sale of snakes.
Paradis expressed her anger about the situation, saying, “If you run out of money, we have a feed bank at Live and Let Live Farm. For rabbits, get handfuls of grass and leaves. Turn the faucet on. That doesn’t take money.”
Paradis said Daughen was purchasing a formula to feed the baby bird. “She only had the bird for 10 days to two weeks, but it costs a lot for that formula, and she didn’t feed the others,” she said.
Paradis said another snake died after leaving the home, but the rest of the surrendered animals are doing well, given the state they were in when they were found.
Tyrrell said New Hampton police prepared the paperwork for the arrests and executed the warrants on Aug. 8. After the couple was released, they vacated the Clement Road home, choosing to live elsewhere, he said.
The New Hampton charges form the latest animal cruelty case in the Newfound Area. Bristol and Alexandria police have charges pending against Jennifer “Bobbi” Choate, who was keeping German shepherds at her home in Bristol and a barn in Alexandria. Two fires killed 36 of the dogs, and 29 others were found in freezing temperatures without adequate shelter or water. Choate has filed for a jury trial in Grafton County Superior Court.
