California Man was Charged with Killing 81 Animals in Three-hour Shooting Rampage

A man in California was charged with killing 81 animals in a three-hour shooting rampage - The AP
A man in California was charged with killing 81 animals in a three-hour shooting rampage - The AP
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California Man was Charged with Killing 81 Animals in Three-hour Shooting Rampage

A man in California was charged with killing 81 animals in a three-hour shooting rampage - The AP
A man in California was charged with killing 81 animals in a three-hour shooting rampage - The AP

A man suspected of going on a three-hour shooting rampage in Northern California and killing 81 animals, including miniature horses, goats and chickens, pleaded not guilty to animal cruelty and other charges.

Vicente Arroyo, 39, made his first court appearance Thursday after Monterey County Sheriff deputies arrested him earlier in the week for allegedly using several weapons to shoot the animals being housed in pens and cages on a lot in the small community of Prunedale.

The animal owners do not want to be identified or speak with the media, Monterey County Sheriff Commander Andres Rosas told The Associated Press Friday.

“I went out there, and it was a pretty traumatic scene. These were people’s pets,” he said, The AP reported.

One of the miniature horses belonged to the owner of the lot where the animals were housed, and the other 80 belonged to someone who rented the land to house their pets, Rosas said.

According to court records, Arroyo was charged with killing 14 goats, nine chickens, seven ducks, five rabbits, a guinea pig and 33 parakeets and cockatiels. Arroyo is also charged with killing a pony named Lucky and two miniature horses named Estrella and Princessa, KSBW-TV reported.

Some animals survived the shooting that lasted several hours but had to be euthanized because of the severity of their injuries, Rosas said.

Rosas said Arroyo lived in a camper in a vineyard next to the lot where the animals were kept and that a motive is not yet known.

His attorney, William Pernik, said that after talking to Arroyo and his family he became concerned about his client’s mental competency and asked the judge for a mental health evaluation.

“We’re dealing with an individual who has very serious charges and who does not appear to be in the right state of mind to understand the proceedings against him,” Pernik said.

Pernik said that Arroyo’s family had reached out to various country agencies to get help for him but that “unfortunately, he did not receive that mental health help in time before this tragic incident.”

 

The judge ordered Arroyo, who is being held on a $1 million bail, to undergo a mental evaluation.

The court will get an update on Arroyo’s mental status in two weeks, Pernik said.

Authorities received multiple 911 calls around 3:25 a.m. Tuesday reporting shots being fired in Prunedale, an incorporated community about 8 miles (13 kilometers) from the city of Salinas, he said.

Deputies who arrived on the scene could hear shots being fired, and a shelter-in-place was ordered for a five-mile radius.

Monterey County S.W.A.T. members were sent in, and the sheriff’s office also requested drone assistance from the nearby Seaside Fire Department and Gonzales Police Department, Rosas said.

Officers in an armored vehicle arrested Arroyo without incident, he said.

Deputies found a crashed pickup truck and recovered eight firearms, including long rifles, shotguns and handguns, at the scene. After executing a search warrant on Arroyo’s camper, they found another seven firearms, including an illegal AK-47 assault rifle, two ghost guns, and about 2,000 rounds of various calibers of ammunition, Rosas said.

Prosecutors charged Arroyo with dozens of charges involving animal cruelty, willful discharge of a firearm with gross negligence, illegal possession of an assault weapon, vandalism, drug possession and making criminal threats and terrorizing while being in possession of a firearm as a felon.

“This is obviously the most horrific animal cruelty case we’ve ever seen in this county, I’m sure,” Chief Assistant District Attorney Berkley Brannon told KSBW-TV after the Thursday hearing.



2 Astronauts Left Behind in Space as Boeing's Troubled Capsule Returns to Earth

In this image from video provided by NASA, the empty Boeing Starliner capsule floats down towards White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico late Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, after undocking from the International Space Station. (NASA via AP)
In this image from video provided by NASA, the empty Boeing Starliner capsule floats down towards White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico late Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, after undocking from the International Space Station. (NASA via AP)
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2 Astronauts Left Behind in Space as Boeing's Troubled Capsule Returns to Earth

In this image from video provided by NASA, the empty Boeing Starliner capsule floats down towards White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico late Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, after undocking from the International Space Station. (NASA via AP)
In this image from video provided by NASA, the empty Boeing Starliner capsule floats down towards White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico late Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, after undocking from the International Space Station. (NASA via AP)

Boeing’s first astronaut mission ended Friday night with an empty capsule landing and two test pilots still in space, left behind until next year because NASA judged their return too risky.
Six hours after departing the International Space Station, Starliner parachuted into New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range, descending on autopilot through the desert darkness.
It was an uneventful close to a drama that began with the June launch of Boeing's long-delayed crew debut and quickly escalated into a dragged-out cliffhanger of a mission stricken by thruster failures and helium leaks. For months, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams’ return was in question as engineers struggled to understand the capsule’s problems, The Associated Press reported.
Boeing insisted after extensive testing that Starliner was safe to bring the two home, but NASA disagreed and booked a flight with SpaceX instead. Their SpaceX ride won’t launch until the end of this month, which means they’ll be up there until February — more than eight months after blasting off on what should have been a quick trip.
Wilmore and Williams should have flown Starliner back to Earth by mid-June, a week after launching in it. But their ride to the space station was marred by the cascade of thruster trouble and helium loss, and NASA ultimately decided it was too risky to return them on Starliner.
So with fresh software updates, the fully automated capsule left with their empty seats and blue spacesuits along with some old station equipment.
“She’s on her way home,” Williams radioed as the white and blue-trimmed capsule undocked from the space station 260 miles (420 kilometers) over China and disappeared into the black void.
Williams stayed up late to see how everything turned out. “A good landing, pretty awesome,” said Boeing's Mission Control.
Cameras on the space station and a pair of NASA planes caught the capsule as a white streak coming in for the touchdown, which drew cheers and applause.
Starliner’s crew demo capped a journey filled with delays and setbacks. After the space shuttles retired more than a decade ago, NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX for orbital taxi service. Boeing ran into so many problems on its first test flight with no one aboard in 2019 that it had to repeat it. The 2022 do-over uncovered even more flaws and the repair bill topped $1 billion.
SpaceX’s crew ferry flight later this month will be its 10th for NASA since 2020. The Dragon capsule will launch on the half-year expedition with only two astronauts since two seats are reserved for Wilmore and Williams for the return leg.
As veteran astronauts and retired Navy captains, Wilmore and Williams anticipated hurdles on the test flight. They’ve kept busy in space, helping with repairs and experiments. The two are now full-time station crew members along with the seven others on board.
Even before the pair launched on June 5 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Starliner’s propulsion system was leaking helium. The leak was small and thought to be isolated, but four more cropped up after liftoff. Then five thrusters failed. Although four of the thrusters were recovered, it gave NASA pause as to whether more malfunctions might hamper the capsule’s descent from orbit.
Boeing conducted numerous thruster tests in space and on the ground over the summer, and was convinced its spacecraft could safely bring the astronauts back. But NASA could not get comfortable with the thruster situation and went with SpaceX.
Flight controllers conducted more test firings of the capsule’s thrusters following undocking; one failed to ignite. Engineers suspect the more the thrusters are fired, the hotter they become, causing protective seals to swell and obstruct the flow of propellant. They won’t be able to examine any of the parts; the section holding the thrusters was ditched just before reentry.
Starliner will be transported back to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where the analyses will unfold.
“We will review the data and determine the next steps for the program,” Boeing program manager Mark Nappi said in a statement.
NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich said earlier this week that the space agency remains committed to having two competing US companies transporting astronauts. The goal is for SpaceX and Boeing to take turns launching crews — one a year per company — until the space station is abandoned in 2030 right before its fiery reentry. That doesn’t give Boeing much time to catch up.
“We are excited to have Starliner home safely. This was an important test flight for NASA in setting us up for future missions” with Boeing, Stich said in a statement after the return.