By Tommy Witherspoon

Tribune-Herald staff writer

A Bruceville man who shot a big, white dog named Bella last year because he was tired of the dog chewing up his newspaper has pleaded guilty to animal cruelty charges.

Kenneth Lynn Smith, 47, and FBI agent Lovett Leslie Ledger Jr. of Lorena, are among the latest in McLennan County to be prosecuted for killing animals. Those numbers have increased since animal cruelty laws were amended five years ago in memory of Queso, the stray cat reportedly killed by two Baylor University baseball players in 2001.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the Queso case changed the nature of prosecution statewide in animal cruelty cases,” said Waco attorney Rod Goble, who represents Smith and represented one of the baseball players. “The Queso laws changed the penalty from a misdemeanor to a felony and amended those laws to make it a lot easier to prosecute those types of cases than it used to be.”

Smith, a former copy machine repairman, pleaded guilty to shooting a dog behind his house on Archie Lane in Bruceville in April 2007. Witnesses told police that they heard his son ask him if he shot the dog and he reportedly said, “Hell, yeah. I’m tired of him getting my paper.”

A neighbor told Bruceville police that he had adopted the dog as a stray, adding that his family “had taken the dog into their hearts,” according to reports filed in the case.

Prosecutors recommended last week that Smith be placed on deferred adjudication probation for five years and be fined $1,000. Judge Matt Johnson of Waco’s 54th State District Court will sentence him Sept. 10 after reviewing a report compiled by probation officers.

“Mr. Smith made a mistake and has asked the judge to put him on probation,” Goble said.

Ledger, 39, was indicted last week on charges that he shot and killed a 3-pound Chihuahua named Sassy with an air rifle near his home in Lorena in February.

Prosecutor Crawford Long said the Queso laws changed the law that formerly limited prosecutors because they had to prove ownership of an animal. Queso was a stray, which proved problematic in the prosecution of Baylor baseball players Derek Brehm and Clint Bowers.

The law now says that a person is guilty of animal cruelty if he tortures an animal or in a cruel manner kills or causes it serious bodily injury.

The Queso case

The March 2001 Queso case garnered national attention, especially from animal rights groups. Brehm and Bowers were arrested after reportedly targeting the stray cat that hung around the Taco Cabana restaurant on South Sixth Street. Queso’s name came from the cat’s fondness for the spicy cheese sauce.

A McLennan County jury acquitted Brehm on misdemeanor animal cruelty charges in the shooting and decapitation of Queso. Prosecutors dropped charges against Bowers afterward because the evidence against him was almost identical to that against his teammate.

The jury had been instructed in the case that the state had to prove Brehm either tortured the cat or killed the stray animal without an owner’s consent.

Police stopped Brehm and Bowers after Taco Cabana employees called to say they had seen two men pick up the cat and then heard gunshots. When officers approached their vehicle, they found the cat’s head had been severed and skinned.

twitherspoon@wacotrib.com

757-5737