Charges have been dropped against a 44-year-old Gable man accused of killing up to 300,000 chickens at 16 different Clarendon County chicken houses in February.
Clarendon County Chief Magistrate Judge Percy Harvin said Tuesday during a preliminary hearing he felt authorities did not have enough probable cause to maintain a case against James Laverne Lowery, who was charged in early April by the Clarendon County Sheriff's Office with eight counts of second-degree burglary and four counts of malicious injury to animals or property.
A Sumter magistrate judge in late May decided that charges there of malicious injury to personal property and second-degree burglary would be dropped as well.
Harvin said authorities can still pursue the charges before a grand jury.
"Just because I've thrown these charges out at this level, that doesn't mean the Solicitor's Office can't directly present them to a Grand Jury for an indictment," Harvin said.
Lowery was accused of cutting alarms to the chicken houses on three separate nights in February, and then setting conditions in the houses for the chickens to suffocate to death. The animals were owned by Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation, a plant based in Sumter with headquarters in Greeley, Colorado.
The company provides feed for the chickens, along with the birds, and local farms operate somewhat as subcontractors, housing and raising the animals for up to nine weeks before returning them to the Sumter plant for processing.
Local farmers told The Manning Times in February that, depending on the birds’ ages, they can easily freeze or roast to death if temperatures are not strictly maintained in the houses.
Garrett said Lowery was previously a contract farmer with Pilgrim’s Pride, but that the company ended his contract, allegedly for poor performance, earlier this year.
Lowery's attorney, Chip McMillan, said at the man's bond hearing in April that "the only evidence they have against my client is cell phone records."
"They have no physical evidence tying him to these attacks," McMillan said.
Manninglive.com has put in calls to the Clarendon County Sheriff's Office, the 3rd Circuit Solicitor's Office and McMillan's office.
UPDATE: Solicitor will present charges to Grand Jury
