WATCH: Surviving Horses Rescued After Unreal VIC Animal Cruelty Discovery

By

Published

April 4, 2016

This morning, we told you if you wanted to start your Monday with an unfathomable dose of animal cruelty, you’d come to the right place.

Overnight, a man was arrested and subsequently charged for ninety-two cases of animal cruelty and criminal damage in relation to the abhorrent state of the horses kept on his property just northwest of Melbourne. Twenty two horses were found dead on the premises, with a further twenty two alive but critically malnourished.

More details have emerged and unfortunately, if you want to close your Monday with much of the same, we can accommodate. Sadly.

7 News reports the accused is none other than former Australian Olympian Bruce Akers, who was also charged with neglect in 2001. The network’s footage from the year after shows similarly emaciated horses, before Akers charges through a barbed-wire fence on a quad-bike and lunges at a reporter.

An Olympic wrestler has been charged over one of Victoria’s worst cases of animal cruelty. @ChristieCooper7 reports. https://t.co/bh6p7CQjqr

— 7 News Melbourne (@7NewsMelbourne) April 4, 2016

Prosecutor Sergeant Jim Currell said of the horses still alive on the property, many were rated at a body scale index of 0. That’s as close as a horse can get to death without dying.

If there is a positive note to this story – and that’s a big if – it’s that three horse trainers have volunteered to pick up the horses, which will eventually be taken into the care of Racing Victoria and the RSPCA. Hopefully their caretakers have the basic human decency to, oh, you know, feed them.

Source: 7 News / Herald Sun.
Photo: 7 News / Twitter.