LAPORTE, Minn. — A couple is charged with multiple counts of mistreatment of animals after the discovery of four dead horses and additional malnourished horses on their Hubbard County property.
Stephanie Nicole Johnson, age 27, and her 32-year-old husband Johnathan Macarthur Johnson are each charged with nine criminal counts of overwork, torture or mistreatment of animals on their farm in Laporte. The charges are a mixture of felonies and gross misdemeanors.
The criminal complaints filed against the couple describe how deputies responded to a report of animal neglect on the Johnson's property April 4 and saw one dead horse on the ground and two that appeared severely malnourished. Investigators didn't see any food or water available to the animals.
The lead investigator made contact with Stephanie Johnson, who denied there was a dead horse on the property. When the deputy told her he had personally seen the horse while arriving at the farm she allegedly admitted that the horse had "gone down" in January so she shot it. Stephanie Johnson reportedly refused to show the deputy where the horse feed was, and told him to get a warrant. She said no when asked if there were additional dead animals on the property.
Once a search warrant was issued investigators located two additional dead adult horses on the property, and then a dead foal (baby horse). Live horses in the pasture were in poor condition, and there was evidence they had been eating the bark off trees. The lead investigator says Stephanie Johnson told him she and her husband went to Bemidji to buy bags of alfalfa cubes every day, but investigators found only empty bags and just one partially filled bag of horse feed in the home.
A veterinarian was called in on April 5 to examine five live horses and the four dead ones. They were found to be in extremely poor health due to lack of food and nutrition, thin with very little muscle mass. The five living animals were seized and relocated but one of them, a pregnant female named Lady, died as a result of not being fed while at the Johnson property.
