$10,000 Reward Offered in Cattle Deaths

A $10,000 reward is being offered by the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible for intentionally locking a small herd of cattle into a corral, causing death by starvation of all but one of the herd. The event occurred on or around the first week of Dec. 2019 in the Tule Spring area.

Sheriff Kerry Lee reported less than half a dozen cattle were locked into a fenced watering spring the first part of December and left unattended.

The rancher in the area, the Virgin River Valley north of Mesquite in the southeastern corner of Lincoln County, was unaware of this and did not make the discovery until the heavy snows had melted and poor road conditions improved enough to allow access.

All but one of the cattle had starved to death, Lee said. “The rancher feels this was a criminal act and done intentionally. So we are trying to gather any information from the public as to what they might know or might have seen.”

The story broke on the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department Facebook page Jan. 6, and Lee said, “Within 30 minutes, we began receiving calls providing us with a few leads and some useful information. We are following up on those leads now, but as of yet, have developed no suspects.”

Lee noted the rancher, who was not named, is willing to put up a $10,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the criminals.

He thought the act might be prosecuted as destroying someone’s private property, cruelty to animals or several other categories it might fit under, “but it was definitely a criminal act.”

If you have any information or trail camera footage of vehicles in that area, please contact Sheriff Lee directly at klee@lcso-nv.org, or phone the department dispatch center at (775) 962-5151, open 24/7.