Petition: He Was Banned From Owning Animals. They Found 35 Dogs and Four Graves.

Loney Leroy Garrett had already been to prison for this. Two years inside, three years probation, and a court order barring him from owning animals. In July 2025 investigators removed 35 hounds from his Goose Creek property in South Carolina, found in filthy, urine-soaked crates without clean food or water, and dug up the skeletal remains of four more dogs buried on the land. He now faces 74 charges. He was scheduled in court in August 2026 and did not turn up. Please sign the petition demanding full prosecution.

✍  Sign the Petition

The charge sheet is worth reading closely, because it shows how these cases actually get built. Thirty-five counts of ill-treatment of animals sit in General Sessions court, one per dog. The remaining charges are municipal: four counts for improper burial and 35 counts for failing to vaccinate against rabies. That per-animal structure is what makes a sentence proportionate to the scale, and it is the exact thing that gets lost when a hoarding case is charged as a single count. A judge has ruled the case will proceed to jury trial despite Garrett’s absence, expected late October or early November. He has been charged and not convicted, and is entitled to due process.

What makes this case matter beyond one property is the timeline advocates describe. Ann Gillentine, who fostered some of the rescued hounds, told reporters Garrett was not supposed to own animals at the time, that he moved dogs off the property while on probation, and that they reappeared in the yard once probation ended. She called the earlier sentence a slap on the wrist. If that account holds, the ownership ban did what ownership bans frequently do when nobody is checking: it paused the situation rather than ending it. More than 30 people in red shirts packed a small magistrate courtroom for the pretrial hearing, several wearing photographs of the dogs they had taken in, and Aldwin Roman of the Charleston Animal Society noted that community members were central to the current charges existing at all. One Green Planet has covered how to report suspected animal cruelty, and the case is reported by the Post and Courier.

✍  Sign the Petition Now

Sign These Urgent Petitions!

• Petition: Alabama Allows 10 Years in Prison Per Animal. Cherokee County Charged It as a Misdemeanour.
• Petition: She Told Deputies There Were Five Dogs. They Removed 36 Border Collies.
• Petition: He Pleaded Guilty to Animal Cruelty in 2024. In 2026 Police Found 58 More Dogs.