An Arkansas family woke up to the horror that their animals were slaughtered — here’s what we know

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The Wiggins family is looking for answers and police are working towards finding them.

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An Arkansas dad and his daughter were horrified to discover during a routine morning check on Dec. 29 that animals they had cared for more a decade were slaughtered overnight in their pen by an unknown perpetrator or perpetrators.

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It happened in Woodruff County, where the sheriff’s office of the same name is vowing to catch whoever did this and punish them to the full extent of the law.

WMCActionNews5 was on scene and spoke with William Wiggins, while also grabbing images of some of the surviving creatures.  The animals that were killed included eight goats, an alpaca and a calf, and they had injuries to their necks and legs, KTHV reported.

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Among the surviving ones were mini horses, donkeys, pigs, cows and goats. One of the goats was wounded and walked around the pen without putting any pressure on its back left leg.

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Wiggins asked people to imagine what losing a herd of their cats and dogs would feel like to get a sense of what he and his daughter are going through.

“We loved on them, fed them bottles, took them in the house when they were sick. Everyone knows how much they love their dogs and cats, imagine losing a whole herd of them at one time,” he said.

He said they cried when they found their animals dead that morning.

Sheriff Phil Reynolds of the Woodruff County Sheriff’s Office has promised to track down the “cowardly” person or persons behind the slaughter.

“Whoever cowardly did this heinous act to animals as innocent as these in captivity, they will be punished to the extent of the law in the fullest,”he said.

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Here’s what the sheriff said on Facebook about the incident:

The Woodruff County Sheriff’s Department is looking for leads into last night’s massacre of animals at the Ferrell Wiggins’ property in the Pumpkin Bend community. Fenced animals including goats, an alpaca, and a calf were slain. Please notify the department of you have any leads or saw any suspicious activity between 7 pm on December 28th and 8 am on December 29th in that area. Contact the department via Facebook or 870.347.2583. Please share this post to help get the word out.

Sheriff Phil Reynolds

$500 cash reward offered to anyone with information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for this heinous act.

Wiggins told KTHV that the way he’s coping with this is thinking that “somebody that just didn’t know what they were doing” was responsible.

What do you think?

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