Shasta County officials agreed to pay a $300,000 settlement after deputies drove hundreds of miles to seize a 9-year-old girl's pet named Cedar, which was later slaughtered despite the family's attempts to save it from a county fair's livestock auction.
"As a result, the young girl who raised Cedar lost him, and Cedar lost his life," Jessica Long wrote in her lawsuit, according to Courthouse News Service. "Now plaintiffs can never get him back."
State Sen. Brian Dahle had bid $902 for the goat at the 2022 Shasta District Fair through a representative. According to the lawsuit, the girl "loved Cedar and the thought of him going to slaughter was something she could not bear. While sobbing in his pen beside him, [she] communicated to her mother she didn't want Cedar to go to slaughter."
Long moved the goat to a Sonoma County farm to protect it, but deputies obtained a warrant and seized Cedar, despite having authorization to search only a different location in Napa County.
"No litigation can bring Cedar back," Ryan Gordon, an attorney for Long and her daughter, told Courthouse News Service. "The $300,000 settlement with the county of Shasta and Shasta County Sheriff's Office is the first step in moving forward."
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