A man who pleaded guilty to slaughtering six miniature horses in an act of revenge is to serve just 18 months in jail.
Business dispute
As reported in H&C last year, the two-year-old show horses were found in their stables with their throats cut on the morning of 21 December 2013 at a yard near Adelaide in South Australia.
Michael O’Connell (50) admitted to leaving his company’s Christmas party while drunk and killing two colts and four fillies over a business dispute between him and the horses’ owners.
Julie Jackson withheld O’Connell’s final invoice of $37,000, because she was not happy with the building work he had carried out.
‘Horrible sins’
“Most people kill animals for food,” said the judge. “Most people commit crimes to gain money to live, or to obtain drugs which they feel they need, or to obtain property which they cannot afford otherwise.
“Your motive was the lowest, you killed these six animals to exact revenge, not to obtain anything for yourself.”
O’Connell wrote an apology to Jackson, saying he was didn’t think his actions “would change everybody’s life so much”. He also asked for forgiveness for his “horrible sins”. However, Jackson said she would never recover from the “blood-fuelled massacre” and that her heart was “forever broken”.
‘Nasty and vicious’
Despite the judge’s condemnation of the act which he described as “particularly nasty and vicious”, he ordered O’Connell serve just 18 months of his three-and-a-half-year term. He claimed the destruction of his building business which has had “devastating consequences” on his life is punishment enough.
Terry Hocking, who found the dead horses, said eighteen months is not enough.
“He’s lost his reputation? Bad luck — we’ve lost loved ones, we’ve lost more than he has,” he told Adelaide Now.