'Justice for Jayco Cats,' Protesters rally, prosecutor denies new charges

Three men were fired from their jobs and charged with animal cruelty earlier this month, but the prosecutor's office dropped those charges after it became clear the Middlebury Police Department misquoted a Jayco vice president in its report

The Wednesday announcement that no charges would be filed came just minutes after a peaceful protest, demanding justice for the cats killed at Jayco, concluded outside the prosecutor's office.

Dozens showed up, including Savannah Diezel and her daughter Trinity.

"The cats deserve justice," Trinity said. "They didn't deserve to go through that. They're just cats."

"This incident actually caused a really hard conversation between me and my daughter because she didn't quite understand what happened, and when it was broken down to her, she was really upset and emotional," said Savannah. "It was actually up to her to come here today or not, and she said she wanted to come."

Others, like Nancy Adkins, a founder of Catsnip, Etc in Goshen, came out to protest.

"These gentlemen, and they're not really gentlemen, but I'm being nice, admitted to what they did, and they let them go," Adkins said. "And why are we not finding out about this until now, when it happened in February? And how many other cats did they torture or put in an industrial compactor?"

And like Douglas Mulvaney of the Mulvaney Law Office in Elkhart.

"I've been a cat owner for 50-plus years, we're on our third generation of cats in our household. I feel very strongly about animal cruelty. It's just wrong," Mulvaney said. "And I'm dumbfounded as an attorney why it has taken the prosecutor so long to charge these individuals."

The peaceful demonstration was organized by Jodi Aker of Meow Mission in South Bend.

"This isn't about Jayco. This is about three individuals who purposely mutilated and tortured live animals, and they admitted to it," Aker said. "Why are we not prosecuting them?"

However, just minutes after the protest concluded, the prosecutor's office announced it would not pursue further charges for the men accused of killing the two animals at Jayco, arguing the feral cats damaged business property and didn't endure prolonged suffering.

We've left multiple requests for the Middlebury Police Department, and there are still questions ABC57 has that no one has answered.

Who notified the Middlebury police back in February? Why didn't the news media learn about it until June? Were the former employees fired at the time of the incident or after the story became public?

What is clear now, though, is that Prosecutor Vicki Becker will not pursue re-charging the three men accused of animal cruelty.