PORTSMOUTH, Va.(by Becca Mitchell and Erica Greenway) – A Portsmouth Police officer and his wife are charged with animal cruelty after a former police horse had to be euthanized after being in their care.
David Kelly remembers all too well what the horse, named Amy, looked like when he got her and it’s not a happy memory.
“Poor Amy was in the middle of the field, just skin and bones, soaking wet, didn’t have enough energy to shiver,” he says.
He picked her up in March from Portsmouth Police officer Brian Davis who worked with the K-9 unit, and his wife Jennifer.
The condition Amy was in at the time was even more shocking because of how Kelly remembered her looking previously. For 14 years she was part of the Portsmouth Police Department’s mounted patrol.
“She was a really good girl, gave a lot of her life to the city. She had her own badge. She was a cop, just like the K9s are,” Kelly said.
When she retired, Kelly said Amy went to live with the Davis family, staying with them in Suffolk for four years.
In March, when the couple decided they didn’t want her anymore, David says he and his wife, Debra, were happy to add her to their family of horses – having no idea what Amy’s health was like until they went to pick her up and couldn’t believe what they saw.
“You don’t get to that condition overnight,” David says.
They took her home, but after three weeks and several visits from the vet, they had to euthanize Amy.
“It was just, her health had gone to the point that her body wouldn’t accept getting better,” David says.
Since then, the Kellys have been waiting to see something done about what happened to her, and now they feel it has.
Brian and Jennifer Davis were arrested Monday, both charged with animal cruelty and inadequate care.
According to Portsmouth Police, Brian Davis is currently in an administrative assignment.
