Shepherdsville woman asks community: Who killed my pet pigs?

Chad Mills

Chad Mills
Reporter
Jun 7, 2019
Jun 7, 2019 Updated Jun 7, 2019

BULLITT COUNTY, Ky. (WDRB) -- Sunnie Howell barely had the words to describe what she and even her pet, a friendly pig named Gypsy, were feeling.

Howell could only muster a string of words: distraught, angry and destroyed.

Gypsy survived without a scratch, but Howell said the pig's two parents were beaten to death Thursday evening in her Hillbrook Drive backyard while she was out for an anniversary dinner in Shepherdsville, Kentucky.

Two pigs — The last known image of the two pigs found dead Thursday night. (WDRB Photo)

"A bullet to the brain or the slaughterhouse would have been faster than that was," said Howell, who showed WDRB the small shed where she found the bodies. "The things that we saw — the way the faces were crushed. It wasn't a matter of, 'Oh, their heads are bloodied.' Their heads were crushed."

Based on the injuries, Howell said there's no way the two died from fighting each other.

"That's not something one pig would do to another," she said. "We went and got a friend of mine from the back of the subdivision who was going to help me bury the pigs. And when we pulled them out, he said, 'Oh dear God, it looks like somebody took a sledgehammer to their face.'"

Howell said an animal like a coyote couldn't have been responsible either. When she left for dinner that evening, she said the three pigs were left in the shed with the door firmly shut and secured by two latches. When she returned home around 7 p.m., she said the door was still closed but the two latches had been unlocked.

The unlocked latches are why she believes a person is to blame for killing the two pigs, which weren't just pets:

"We use them as [therapy pigs]," Howell said. "They've been to hospitals. They've been allowed to stay in hotels with us. They've gone to baseball parks and nursing homes and they've gone to events outside of other states."