At least 46 cockfighting suspects reportedly arrested
Showing Animals Respect & Kindness [SHARK] founder Steve Hindi, having reported to the Ector County sheriff’s department a cockfight in progress at an undisclosed location near Odessa, Texas, on December 6, 2025 at about 3:45 p.m. anticipated yet another of a series of major cockfighting busts would soon go down.
Videotaping the scene from a drone flying at the legally required distance from the cockfighters’ private property, using a powerful distance lens to pull in the details while a wide angle lens established the drone’s position, Hindi could see and count the Ector County sheriff’s department vehicles as they arrived.
Ector County sheriff’s office “did nothing”
Two hours later, Hindi disgustedly told ANIMALS 24-7 that the sheriff’s department, despite arriving in force, had done nothing: no arrests, no confiscations of roosters or cockfighting paraphernalia, a written report supposedly filed, but no action actually taken, Hindi said he was told by a sheriff’s deputy.
Hindi understood that someone had told the Ector County sheriff’s department that third-party video evidence could not be used to obtain a search warrant, or could not be admitted in court, or some such cockamamie yarn contradicting both the letter of Texas law and recent Showing Animals Respect & Kindness experience in reporting cockfights to the authorities in several other Texas counties.
Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle also admitted to a bit of frustration in anti-cockfighting efforts, in a December 1, 2025 email to supporters, sent again several times during the next week.
eBay continues selling cockfighting paraphernalia, Pacelle says
“After our investigators uncovered that Etsy was illegally allowing its platform to be used for trafficking cockfighting implements—razor-sharp weapons strapped to birds’ legs to intensify bloodletting and cruelty—the company responded and removed the contraband,” Pacelle wrote.
“But our investigation uncovered an even more consequential lawbreaker: eBay. We alerted executives and lawyers at the Silicon Valley e-commerce giant. They are refusing to act, out of either stubbornness or indifference.
“Mind you,” Pacelle said, “trafficking in cockfighting weapons is a federal felony and also a crime in California, where eBay is headquartered.”
Thanksgiving week brought big busts
Except for the issues in Ector County, Texas, and with eBay, Hindi and Pacelle both cautiously admit to flying higher lately than tethered gamefowl ever go.
“The cockfighting ‘season’ traditionally opens right around Thanksgiving,” Pacelle explained, “after the roosters have completed their molt.
But “In recent days,” Pacelle summarized, “the Center for a Humane Economy and our partners at Showing Animals Respect & Kindness gave the cockfighters a taste of what’s in store for them this cockfighting season.”
The string of busts began on November 16, 2025 in Ascencion Parish, Louisiana, television station WBRZ reported from Baton Rouge.
Four suspects booked in Louisiana
“According to parish jail rosters,” WBRZ said, “25-year-old Jose Perez, 28-year-old Bryan Saldana, 39-year-old Filiberto Banda-Pena, and 33-year-old Oscar Fregaso-Solorzano were all booked for one count each of organized cockfighting.
“Perez received an additional 36 counts of possession of a cockfighting animal,” WBRZ added, and was held on $360,000 bond, after 34 live roosters and two dead roosters were found on the premises.
Saldana and Banda-Pena “posted a $50,000 bond,” WBRZ continued.
“Fregaso-Solorzano had an additional charge as a fugitive from another state. Information about that was not immediately available.” ANIMALS 24-7 also failed to find the details.
Seven suspects booked in Connecticut
The nationwide string of cockfighting busts continued in Connecticut, reported New Haven Register staff writers Peter Yankowski and Brian Zahn, with seven arrests on November 23, 2025 in neighboring West Haven, just a few miles from Pacelle’s boyhood home in New Haven.
“West Haven police chief Joseph Perno said officers were dispatched following an anonymous complaint, and what they found was like nothing city police had seen before,” Yankowski and Zahn recounted.
“The responding officer reported seeing ‘rooster spurs and blood’ on the floor.”
A crowd estimated “at more than 100 then spotted the police officer in their midst and bolted, police reports said, with people ‘seen scattering in all different directions and jumping fences onto other properties.’”
The seven suspects who were apprehended, Yankowski and Zahn said, were “charged with cruelty to animals and other offenses.”
Food, water, & beer
All seven suspects, consistent with most other recent cockfighting busts outside of Appalachia, had Hispanic surnames: Jose Jiminez-Ortiz, 62, of New Britain, Connecticut; Andrade Catana, 52, of New Windsor, New York; Kelvin Quituizaca-Martinez, 32, of Middletown, New York; Luciano Ramos, 60, of Newburgh, New York; Jesus Ventura-Reyes, 60, of Brooklyn, New York; and Jose Gonzalez, 58, of West Haven, Connecticut.
Continued Yankowski and Zahn, “One of the men arrested told police that another of the individuals charged was living above the garage and had rented the space. The man told police the people running the event had food, water, and beer for sale inside, and that some people had been smoking marijuana.”
Jose Jiminez-Ortiz was allegedly identified as the door man, who collected entry fees ranging from $25 to $50 from the other attendees.
Yankowski and Zahn recalled previous Connecticut cockfighting busts in 2015 and in March 2024.
Two Texas busts in two days
Four days later, according to Crime Watch Dallas, Johnson County sheriff’s deputies on November 27, 2025 arrested 25 people and impounded 50 roosters at a “Turkey Day 4 Roosters” cockfight in Alvarado, Texas.
On November 28, 2025, the Collin County, Texas sheriff’s office arrested eight people and impounded 55 live roosters, two dead roosters, and alleged cockfighting paraphernalia, reported the Farmersville Times.
The same day, the Harris County sheriff’s office “uncovered a suspected illegal rooster-fighting and gambling operation inside a business officially listed as a barbershop” on the northwest side of Houston, Texas.
“Authorities say they found at least 60 roosters used for fighting, some alive and some dead. The sheriff’s office noted that although the building is officially a barbershop, no hair-cutting supplies were found,” reported Chron.com news editor Allyson Ackerman.
Four suspects were arrested.
Pit running for 20 years busted in West Virginia
Also on November 28, 2025, “after receiving a call from Showing Animals Respect & Kindness,” SHARK announced, “West Virginia state troopers entered a barn packed with nearly 90 people and 150 roosters. The moment officers walked in, the crowd scattered. The troopers cited the operator’s wife,” SHARK said, and collected the identification of attendees to enable filing possible charges later.
“This disruption itself is significant, as this pit has run for more 20 years,” said the Showing Animals Respect & Kindness statement.
(SHARK photo)
Hatfield family
SHARK founder Steve Hindi told ANIMALS 24-7 that he believes the cockfighting barn raided is owned, and the cockfights there arranged, by a descendant of the Hatfield family, notorious for their part in the Hatfield-vs.-McCoys family feud that raged from 1863 to 1891, resulting in at least 22 deaths.
The most recent conviction of a Hatfield for cockfighting of which ANIMALS 24-7 is aware came on August 22, 2023, when according to the Lexington Herald-Leader, Oakley “Whitey” Hatfield pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiring to sponsor and exhibit animals in a fighting venture, plus one charge of attending an animal fight.
Hatfield, one of nine people charged after a Kentucky State Police raid on the notorious Bald Rock cockpit in June 2021, was sentenced to serve one year and one day in jail, and to pay a $1,000 fine.
Seventeen suspects in Provo, Utah
The 2025 Thanksgiving week string of cockfighting busts concluded, reported Aubree B. Jennings and Natalie Wadas for KUTV in Provo, Utah, with the November 30, 2025 arrests of seventeen suspects, the impoundment of 362 living roosters, and the discovery of 56 dead roosters at a site near Provo in Utah County.
The location “had previously been reported for animal fighting in 2019, according to arrest documents,” Jennings and Wadas said.
“Officers got a warrant and flew a drone over the property, which allegedly captured several people loading cages in and out of vehicles,” Jennings and Wadas continued.
Roosters “did not die a quick painless death” says cop
“The dead chickens were found in a large room with benches, score cards, and a winning board with a list of individuals on it,” Jennings and Wadas paraphrased from the arrest report.
“An adjacent room had several bottles of liquid with needles in them that are used to make the roosters more aggressive. That room also contained several trophies that were labeled with various chicken related achievements,” Jennings and Wadas added.
In a vehicle apprehended nearby, the police report detailed, “were razor claws for the roosters, more aggression-inducing drugs, and two roosters in a box. These objects and substances, along with the dead roosters, show that they did not die a quick painless death.”
“Every weekend we are looking for them”
Assessed Pacelle, “The latest drumbeat of arrests and the shutdown of cockfighting derbies build on the dramatic step-up in enforcement we stirred last season, when we and our partners at SHARK helped take down key cockfighting leaders across the nation.”
Agreed Kevin Chambers, Oklahoma representative for Animal Wellness Action, “Every weekend we are looking for them. Today,” Chambers mentioned on December 7, 2025, “is the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission annual meeting in McAlester. Anthony Devore, the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission president [and cofounder], whom we caught at a cockfight last summer, announced he is stepping down to run for the State Representative seat being vacated by J.J. Humphrey, who is running for Lieutenant Governor.”
The Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission annual meeting is apparently taking place even though the organization itself has been legally dissolved.
(See OK Gamefowl Commission dissolved, top cock Devore criminally charged.)
“Growing impatience & intolerance”
“We are encouraging a growing impatience and intolerance for cockfighting among sheriffs, police, and prosecutors,” Pacelle said. “The people who stage fights at pits across the nation or traffic in fighting birds or fighting implements are no longer getting a free pass or a wink and a nod,” at least not in every case, as seemed to be happening five years ago.
“But we aren’t satisfied with the long list of derbies shut down and cockfighters apprehended. That’s why we need the Fight Inhumane Gambling and High-Risk Animal Trafficking (FIGHT) Act,” Pacelle emphasized, which “would ban online gambling on animal fights, allow courts to seize fighting pit bulls and other property used by convicted animal fighters in the commission of their crimes, stop the shipment of fighting roosters through the mail,” and allow animal advocates to “bring civil suits against cockfighters and dogfighters when governmental authorities are too slow to act.”
(Daniel Leventhal photo)
The FIGHT Act now has 109 House cosponsors and ten Senate cosponsors, but remains chained in the doghouses of the House Committee on Agriculture and the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, & Forestry.
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