Third Circuit Solicitor Ernest "Chip" Finney III said Tuesday afternoon that he will present charges against a 44-year-old man accused in Clarendon and Sumter counties of killing up to 300,000 chickens and causing $1.7 million in damages to a grand juries in those jurisdictions as early as June.
"We do believe there is probably cause against James Lowery," said Finney, reacting to Clarendon Chief Magistrate Judge Percy Harvin's decision Tuesday to drop charges against the suspect due to what he called a "lack of probable cause."
Harvin said in making the decision that the Solicitor's Office is well within its rights to proceed before the grand jury for an indictment.
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.
