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A 9-year-old girl who fell in love with a goat she raised for the Shasta District Fair was heartbroken when agents with a search warrant confiscated the furry livestock and took her away to be slaughtered.
Two years after the scandal broke, Shasta County agreed to pay the girl’s family $300,000 to settle a legal dispute over a floppy-eared brown and white goat named Cedar.
The girl was raising goats for the 2022 fair as part of a program aimed at teaching young people how to care for livestock. But when it came time to sell the cedar and send it to slaughter, Jessica Long’s 9-year-old daughter couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Long begged city officials to let her daughter keep Cedar, offering to remove the goat from the city and pay for it. Instead, the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office sent agents armed with search warrants hundreds of miles across Northern California to find and remove the goats from Billy’s mini-farm, where Long had taken them until the dispute was resolved. I also drove.
It’s unclear who contacted the sheriff’s office to get involved.
The incident sparked an uproar, with Long and her daughter claiming in a federal lawsuit that deputies improperly obtained a search warrant, seized Cedar and turned the animals over to fair authorities. Lawyers also accused the county and fair officials of using law enforcement to intervene in what they described as a legal civil dispute over ownership of the goats.
The cedar, which was purchased at the county fair for $902, was dismantled, but it remains unclear who did it.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Dale A. Drozd approved a settlement that calls for Shasta County to pay Long and her daughter $300,000 to resolve the federal lawsuit out of court.
“Unfortunately, this lawsuit cannot bring Cedar home,” said attorney Vanessa Shakib, who is representing Long. “However, this $300,000 settlement with Shasta County and the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office is a step forward.”
The settlement partially ends two years of ongoing litigation between Long County, Shasta County and the Fair Authority.
Shakib said that for the past two years, city and district authorities have avoided answering important questions about what happened to the goats and what role the authorities played in their capture and destruction. He said he had engaged in “obstructor detection tactics.”
“Even after all these years, there are still some unanswered questions about this case,” she says.
After two years of scrutinizing text messages, emails, phone records and depositions, Shakib said that county and fair officials have determined who slaughtered Cedar, what happened to the meat, and who the sheriff’s deputy was. He said he had not yet revealed whether he was involved in the conflict.
Text messages revealed during the federal lawsuit suggest that equity officials wanted to keep secret what happened to Cedar and who was involved.
“Kathy said OK, but no one needs to know about this,” Shasta Fair Association Livestock Manager BJ McFarlane said on July 22, 2022 Shasta Fair Chief Executive Melanie Silva wrote in a text message. In his message, he mentioned Kathy Muse, a volunteer with the 4-H program and host of the county’s barbecue. “Me and Kathy are just one person. It was killed and donated to a nonprofit if anyone asked.”
“We are a non-profit 😳🤣🤣🤣,” Silva replied.
Long’s lawyers argued in court that the key to the case is figuring out who killed Cedar and who contacted law enforcement. Long and his attorney contacted the goat before it was slaughtered and told the sheriff, the Department of Fairness and county officials that they were disputing ownership of the goat.
Still, Shakib said someone decided to order the seizure and murder of Mr. Cedar, even though he knew a lawsuit would be filed.
County officials deny wrongdoing.
“While the county did nothing wrong, we recognize the risks and costs associated with going to trial, so we agreed to settle the case,” Shasta County Attorney Christopher Pisano said in an email. ” he said. “We are pleased to be able to conclude this litigation and move forward.”
A Shasta County spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Silva, who remains CEO of the Shasta Area Fair, also did not respond to a request for comment.
Despite a partial settlement with Shasta County and the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, the lawsuit is still ongoing. Long and her daughter still have a lawsuit against Shasta District Fair employees and 4-H volunteers.
Shakib said lawyers are still examining evidence, including phone records, to determine what happened to Cedar.
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