Mary Johnson and Greg Salyers with two of their mini-horses.

The county Animal Services Dept.’s advice if you see animals in distress from lack of water or food on private property is, “Don’t take the law into your own hands.”

Susan Bump did and paid for her good Samaritan impulse by being arrested and cited (but not booked) for trespass on Monday, Aug. 23 at 6:15 p.m. Her arraignment is Nov. 8, at 7:30 a.m. at the Vista Criminal Court.

She is charged with misdemeanor trespass (601 of the penal code). The maximum penalty is one year in jail and $1,000 fine.

The actual distress of the animals she wanted to assist is in dispute.

County Animal Services has found no evidence of mistreated animals on the property of the family that she accuses.

The family feels that, in the words of the father, Don Johnson, “We’ve been steamrollered!” He is disappointed at how they have been portrayed in the press. “We’re actually a little shell-shocked.” He plans to seek a restraining order against Bump because of threatening remarks she allegedly made against his daughter, Mary.

Other parties, acting on Bump’s warning “rescued” animals from a property next to where Bump was arrested inadvertently removed the very animals the County could have used as evidence for criminal prosecution—but of the adjacent property owner, not the Johnsons—causing any case that existed to evaporate.

That there are two properties on West Lilac, near where it separates from Lilac, one owned by the Johnsons and the other by a criminal attorney named Lawrence Haines is one confusing aspect of this story. Animal Services has had an open investigation on Haines’s property. It also sent Johnson a “Notice of Complaint,” followed up by a visit where the officer found nothing to cite him for.

Bump and her supporters sometimes talk about the two properties as if they were one and the same.

“Susan is very passionate and it gets her in trouble sometimes,” her friend Judy Vance, who was participant the first time Bump came to the rescue of animals she believed were without water or food on a very hot day in July.

Bump wrote a letter to the editor about her experience, published July 21 (“Heat Wave Hits Animals Hard”).

That first visit didn’t get her in trouble. What did was reentering the property on Aug. 22 and refusing to leave.

The arrest occurred on the five acres of 15-year VC resident Donald Johnson, who works for Mission Pools in Escondido, and lives with his wife, a younger daughter, who is home-schooled, Mary, 18, his oldest daughter, and her fiancee Greg Salyers, 20.

They have horses, goats, rabbits, ducks, geese, turkeys, chickens, two kittens, three regular horses and several minis. It is such a varied menagerie that recently Mary took some to VC Community Church’s vacation bible school (VBS) as a “petting zoo.”

Mary and Greg are veterinary students at Palomar Community College. Mary has raised rescue animals given to her by the Humane Society, since her early teens. In the Western Days parade she entered five regular horses and three minis (winning a first place trophy).

The first time Bump visited, she recalls, “I was with a couple, Judy & Larry Vance. It was late in the day, around 4 p.m. It was 103 degrees. I stopped on my own first. I saw water troughs tipped over and realized there could be an emergency. The water was turned off (due to a broken pipe or broken float) I got a scoop and gave them water [from a nearby water tank that was almost empty] and they were desperately thirsty.”

Bump went home for more water and the Vances returned with her to the Johnson property. Judy Vance confirms that her husband took ten gallon buckets in his truck and the three used them to refill the water tank.

“The animals were in a miserable state,” she says. They fed the animals, including two thin kittens. She claims to have seen and smelled a rotting animal carcass.

Salyers and Mary Johnson confronted them and said they were trespassing.

Vance accused the young people of breaking the law by not giving their animals enough water.

Bump, who visited The Roadrunner office last week, was outraged. “Between them there is not a shred of remorse. That’s what makes me realize this will be ongoing until these animals are taken away from them.” She reported the Johnsons to Animal Services.

Bump provided the paper with photos of emaciated mini-horses. However, they are not from the Johnson house, but from the neighboring Haines property. They are now being cared for by some friends of Bump’s, who removed them from the property with the permission of the owner.

The connection, says Bump, is that Mary Johnson and Salyers are also “caretakers” of those mini-horses, and are responsible for their emaciated condition.

Mary Johnson and Greg Salyers tell a different story. They admit there was little water when Bump and her companions showed up the first time. However, they water their menagerie in the morning and at 5 p.m., An hour later Bump would have seen them being watered, they say.

Don Johnson says that twice during the summer the animals will run out of water before they come home to refill their containers. But that is unusual.

“We don’t eat until the animals eat,” insists Salyers.

Don Johnson says that the pipe that supplies water to the animals is not broken, but the master valve is hard to find if you don’t know where to look. One of the three big horses, Amos, is “famous” for turning over his water bowl, he says.

On that day the young couple had taken animals to VBS. When they returned they saw people at their barn.

Since Mary’s saddle had recently been stolen from the barn, they confronted the strangers and asked what they wanted.

They say Bump reacted aggressively, swore, and accused them of mistreating the animals.

Mary Johnson upbraided Bump for feeding the animals the wrong food. She gave the baby chicks scratch feed when she has been feeding them chick food and gave the mini-horses that they have taken in and have been treating for intestinal distress alfalfa hay instead of pellets and tess (grass hay).

The couple say they are NOT caretakers for their neighbor, although they have over the years sometimes gone on the property and fed and watered them when asked. Most of the time Haines has a nephew come on the property to feed them.

The kittens were recently acquired as rescue animals and were very thin at the time. The carcass was a cow hide that they were curing (and which is still there.)

Johnson, who allowed The Roadrunner to visit his animals, thanks Bump for stopping the first time and watering the animals.

“If Mrs. Bump had been friendly and asked, ‘What is going on, your water bowls are empty,’ or left a note and approached it in a normal fashion, we could have picked up the phone and thanked her. Instead she ramped up on my daughter and said ‘everything is dying and you are killing them.’

He jokes that if he wasn’t feeding his animals why would he have an annual feed bill of $2,000 at Terry’s Hay and Grain?

“It didn’t go right from day one,” he says. “When my daughter ordered her off my property she flipped a switch. Every since then this has been harassment.”

Bump and three others paid them a second visit on Aug. 23, when she was arrested. From the property Bump called the Sheriff to report distressed animals that were dying.

According to Sheriff’s Sgt. Bob Bishop, Bump told the responding deputy that she was an animal lover and wanted the property owners arrested for animal cruelty. “She said she considers herself a vigilante taking care of animals at all costs even if it means getting arrested,” said Bishop.

The deputy then asked her, “OK, why aren’t you notifying the Dept. of Animals Services?”

“She doesn’t think anyone is doing their job,” says Sgt. Bishop, who visited the property shortly after the arrest. “When I was out there yesterday every corral had at least a thirty gallon rubberized filled with clean water. I’m an animal lover. I’ve gone onto people’s property with Animal Services and forcibly removed animals that were being mistreated!” he says.

Bishop says Animal Services warned that Bump wanted to assemble a rescue of the animals. They said there was something on the Internet about it.

“Our information,” Animal Services warned Bishop, “is that she is trying to put together a vigilante group to rescue the horses.”

The Roadrunner asked Animal Services for the Internet link for this reported rescue attempt, and they were unable to provide it.

Don Johnson is seeking a restraining order because he says Bump threatened his daughter on Aug 23. This is backed up by one of Mary’s friends, who called The Roadrunner, gave her name and said Bump told Mary, “I’m going to leave right now because otherwise I’m going to hit you!”

Johnson believes that after being ordered to leave the property the first time by teenagers that Bump decided to punish them.

One factor that Bump and her supporters emphasize is the emaciated condition of the mini-horses on the Haines property. In their descriptions they tend to talk about the minis on the Haines property and the Johnson property as if they were the same animals. The Johnsons do have five minis they got from Haines, but there were many more on the Haines property than that.

Those horses have been removed. Longtime VC resident Fran DeWilde has several. Lorelei Jones has several others. They removed them on Sunday, Aug. 22.

“One of those five minis we have is very old,” says Johnson. “No matter what my daughter has done the ribs won’t go away.”

There is no doubt that there were very emaciated mini horses on the Haines property.

According to Sgt. Bishop, “Haines’s excuse is that he was going through a divorce. They were his wife’s animals so he didn’t put any time in caring for them.”

According to Mrs. DeWilde a scoring system is used to rate the condition of horses, with 10 being obese and 0 being dead. Several of the horses were rated 1, she says.

However, that may not be due to neglect, according to Dr. Linda Byer, a local veterinarian who saw the animals Mrs. DeWilde has.

“She had three minis that were all quite thin, in need of hoof care. They had intestinal sand issues. The weight loss may have been related to lack of feeding. I wouldn’t call it colic. Intestinal sand accumulation can interfere with weight gain,” said Dr. Byer.

She says she cannot say whether the thin animals were a result of eating sand or from being underfed.

According to Dan Desouza, a spokesman for Animal Services, people with “good intentions,” had inadvertently interfered with an ongoing investigation.

“We no longer have the evidence. The animals are gone.”

Animal Services held a hearing on the Haines property. “The conditions were such that no seizure was warranted on the animals that were left on the property. Our officers saw the animals. In a criminal case there is a chain of evidence and that chain of evidence has been disrupted.”

He added, “Whatever evidence that might have existed may have been compromised either by trespassing or through the best of intentions by removing the animals.”

Desouza advises, “I would caution anyone about entering a property and feeding an animal. Without knowing the condition of the animal, the wrong kind of feed or even too much feed can do more harm than good. Simply put, a person with the best of intentions may actually negatively impact an animal.   If someone has concerns about the welfare of an animal, they must not take the law into their own hands but voice their concerns to the proper authorities.”