Horse advocates react to Brunzell sentence

remember this horrifying video we showed you last year. dead horses found inside a black forest barn. tonight, a jury found sheri brunzell guilty on eight counts of animal abuse. krdo newschannel 13’s greg miller has reaction from people who sat through brunzell’s trial. greg, several animal rights advocates were there … are they satisfied with the verdict? heather, those advocates formed a group after 14 horses were seized from brunzell’s barn. they came to this courthouse everyday … and waited six and a half hours to hear the verdict. while they say the judgment is fair … they want animal abuse laws to be tougher. guilty on 8 of 14 counts of animal abuse. a mixed verdict with mixed reaction for sher burnzell, the woman responsible for these horses, found starving and neglected. 0:16 We’re happy there’s a guilty verdict, anna blake is the founder of colorado horse advocates… which formed after the seizure of these horses. what sticks in her mind… 0:24 the 14 horses found dead in the barn, she was not charged. because investigator s could not get dna evidence for bone marrow. 4:37 There’s a real emotional damage that’s done to these sensitive creatures. For the young horses, they’re marked in time until they can have a life. krdo was the first and only station at brunzell’s barn when diana ragula discovered the grizzly site… and contacted the el paso county sheriff’s office. 30:40 i think that they should be brought to justice with every possible count of animal cruelty. several llamas were found, too…but brunzell was cleared of abusing them. We presented what we had… we did the best that we could. Maybe the jury felt the llamas were in better shape than the horses. regardless, the counts are for misdemeanor charges… the highest penalty the law allows for animal abuse and neglect… something that will change in the future. in 2016, animal cruelty will be a class one felony in the united states. 2:32 Animal cruelty is something everyone should be worried about because it impacts the community at large. as for brunzell, a judge will decide in august, whether she can ever own horses again. brunzell faces anywhere from sixty days to eighteen months in jail when she’s sentenced on august 13th. in el paso county, gm, krdo nc 13. all the horses that were siezed are healthy and gaing weight, including dual peppy, a prized former cutting horse. there’s a facebook page dedicated to dual peppy. he has more than 32-thousand likes and 250 new likes this week alone from the coverage of the trial.