NINNEKAH — Acting on a tip alleging an illegal marijuana growing operation, Grady County deputies instead discovered indications of cockfighting, hundreds of malnourished animals and children living in filth.
On Oct. 7, deputies discovered chained dogs, more than 20 fighting roosters — most without water — and a suspected “fighting pit,” as well as ornamental fish living in murky water and more than 200 exotic birds kept in stacked cages. Returning Dec. 11, officers found little improvement to the animals’ care, and they discovered unsanitary conditions in a flea-infested house where young children, including a two-week-old, were living.
District Attorney Jason Hicks filed 71 counts of owning/possessing/keeping/training birds for fighting against a Ninnekah couple: Chue Long Yang, 41, and his wife, Ver Vang, 38. The case marks the most cockfighting-related charges brought in Oklahoma since May 2023 when 59 counts were filed in Oklahoma County against a Newalla man, including 50 counts of possessing birds with the intent to engage in a cockfight.
Yang and Vang also were charged with five counts of child neglect, three counts of cruelty to animals, one count facilitating a cockfight, and one count of keeping a place for cockfighting. Vang was released on $150,000 bond, while Yang is being held in the Grady County Jail in lieu of a $150,000 bond. Their preliminary hearing is set for Wednesday, Jan. 8.
The Oklahoma Department of Human Services placed the couple’s six children — ages 18, 17, 15, 8 and 6 years old, as well as an infant — with a relative of Vang, according to a probable cause affidavit filed by Grady County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Jim Peek.
Multiple “flea lights” were placed throughout the home, including two at each end of the infant’s crib, Peek said. The traps contained numerous dead insects, which were believed to be fleas. The home, which had marijuana “in easy reach of all juveniles,” was “cluttered and in disarray,” Peek wrote in his affidavit. A refrigerator in the house was “extremely filthy,” with mold inside, he said.
“The residence had an overpowering smell of ammonia and feces throughout,” Peek wrote. “The bedrooms (which appeared to be occupied by juvenile females) had such a strong smell of cat urine that they had to be ‘aired out’ before entry could be conducted.”
Multiple kittens were inside the residence and no litter boxes were present, he said.
‘The property was filthy, the animals were in poor shape’
Peek and other deputies first arrived on the property Oct. 7 to look into complaints of marijuana being grown illegally. No marijuana was found growing in a barn or in the house, but deputies saw a large number of animals, including birds and fish. Peek wrote that numerous cages contained what he called “fighting roosters,” and some appeared to be without water. Inside an opened garage, he observed 20 to 30 cages stacked floor to ceiling that contained various types of birds. He estimated the cages held as many as 200 to 300 birds.
He also said he saw several tanks containing a large number of fish, but he said he could not determine the number because the water was “green and extremely cloudy,” Peek wrote in his affidavit (embedded below).
Peek said he contacted the Humane Society of the United States on Oct. 7 for assistance. A week later, he and other sheriff officers along with a veterinarian returned to the Yang and Vang property, with the veterinarian providing a letter that identified errors in care and ways to remedy the issues. A deputy who visited the property Nov. 25 reported that Yang said he was “building chicken coops,” but no changes in the conditions for the other animals were observed.
Grady County deputies, along with members of the Humane Society, returned to the property Dec. 11 with a search warrant.
“The property was filthy, the animals were in poor shape,” said Cynthia Armstrong, Oklahoma state director for the Humane Society. “The dogs were shivering when we arrived, their hip bones were protruding, ribs were showing. The fish tanks were filthy. The bird cages were filthy. It was a bad situation. I’m very grateful the Grady County Sheriff’s Office took action, and I’m glad that we were able to help.”
Armstrong said it took about 16 hours to complete the operation. Veterinarians and others from the Texas-based Operation Kindness and Black Beauty Ranch assisted on scene.
“I don’t know what their grand plan was,” Armstrong said of Yang and Vang, “but they were not keeping up with it.”
The dogs were confined by thick, heavy chains attached to collars that were too big for them, she said. The collar on one dog was so wide it could not move its neck up or down.
“The dogs were all chained to a post in the ground,” she said. “The dogs could run around in a circle, and they had worn all the grass down.”
Altogether, authorities said 269 animals were seized from the couple’s property. An estimated 105 game fowl, including 72 roosters, were discovered on the site and euthanized on the property by veterinarians owing to a risk for spreading infectious diseases to commercial flocks and a lack of placement options, according to the Human Society.
Dogs, cats, fish, companion birds, goats and a pig were removed from the property and transported to undisclosed locations to receive in-depth veterinary exams and care, according to the organization’s press release. Placement arrangements with shelters and rescue partners and sanctuaries will be determined in the coming weeks.
“As different as each of these animals are, when I imagine what their lives have been like, there is something they all have in common — the koi whose entire world is the bottom of an filthy, murky pool; the parrot in a cramped, barren cage who greets strangers with a ‘hello!’ but had plucked out his own feathers; and the sweet, attention-hungry dog pacing in circles as far as her chain will allow her — it’s a bleak existence,” Jessica Johnson, senior director of the Humane Society’s animal rescue team, said in the release. “This was a complex operation for everyone involved and we are especially grateful to the Grady County Sheriff’s Office for intervening for these animals. Thanks to them, these animals don’t have to live like that anymore.”
Yang and Vang surrendered 22 dogs, five cats, one pig, 90 companion birds, 105 chickens, 24 koi fish, 20 pigeons and various tropical and freshwater fish, according to the Humane Society. They did not surrender ownership of five dogs, two cockatoos, one macaw and one cat. The Humane Society has estimated it will cost about $16,750 to care for those nine animals for 30 days. A hearing on the care of those animals is set for 2 p.m. today.
During deputies’ Oct. 7 visit to the Ninnekah property, both Yang and Vang denied that any of the game fowl had been fighting on their property, Peek wrote in his affidavit. During the return visit Dec. 11, Peek said deputies and Humane Society members found rooster transport boxes with confirmed blood splatter, exercise equipment used to condition roosters for fighting, and a home-made rooster fighting pit that showed both blood splatter as well as possible gouge marks made by spurs, knives or gaffs that can be attached to roosters while fighting. He said 72 “fighting roosters,” which had little or no food or water, were being used and transported to fight as well as fighting on location.”
Grady County Sheriff Gary Boggess did not return phone calls from NonDoc seeking a comment, but he did provide a statement to the Humane Society that thanked the organization for its assistance.
“I would like to say thank you to the members of the Humane Society of the United States for their assistance and hard work in the rescue of several hundred animals that were involved in an animal cruelty investigation,” Boggess said. “We executed a search warrant on the residence in Grady County where the animals were being mistreated. With their help, animals were rescued and will be rehomed.”
Two animal-rights groups, Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy, applauded the Grady County Sheriff’s Office for taking action against the alleged cockfighting operation and for rescuing the large number of animals.
“As we see in almost every case of a cockfighting bust, the perpetrators are also charged with associated crimes,” Kevin Chambers, the Oklahoma director of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy, said in press release. “In the Grady County case, the accused were also charged with child neglect.”
Wayne Pacelle, president of both groups, said cockfighting “is barbaric and it is a felony under state and federal law.”
“Cockfighters are being rudely awakened to the truth that these felons do not operate beyond the reach of the law,” Pacelle said in the release.
Most charges dropped in Oklahoma County case
In May 2023, investigators with the Oklahoma City Animal Welfare Division confiscated 93 game-type birds — 50 roosters and 43 hens — along with 158 eggs from the property of Ellie Pennit Grino and his wife, Jannine Crespo Yee in Newalla. A large number of vitamins, antibiotics and leg tethers also were seized, according to affidavits filed in the case.
Also recovered, according to court papers, were 181 magazines related to cockfighting with dates ranging from 1960 through 2014, as well as six handwritten notebooks filled with details on contacts, breeding, fighting, keep schedules and rooster fight analyses. Officers also found papers on the way to attach the metal spurs sometimes used in cockfighting. The journals dated from 2000 through 2018.
Cockfighting, a blood sport made felonious by 56 percent of Oklahomans in 2002, briefly resurfaced as a hot political issue at the Legislature in 2023 and 2024 when a bill to let county voters decrease penalties to misdemeanors passed the House of Representatives.
Ellie Pennit Grino and his wife, Jannine Crespo Yee, were charged in Oklahoma County District Court in May 2023. Grino, 51, was named in all 59 cockfighting-related counts filed by the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office. Grino and Yee, 45, were charged with one count of keeping a place, equipment or facility to be used in permitting cockfighting. They were accused of having equipment used in permitting cockfighting in their home, about one mile north of Interstate 40 near Harrah Road in Newalla.
After a preliminary hearing Sept. 10, 2024, Grino was ordered to stand trial on just one of the counts. Before the hearing for Grino got underway, prosecutors announced they were dismissing 56 of the charges originally filed against him. That resulted in Grino facing three charges, and after a 90-minute hearing, Oklahoma County Special Judge Jason Glidewell ruled that prosecutors failed to prove probable cause in the animal cruelty charge and the charges of keeping a place, equipment or facility to be used in permitting cockfighting, which were filed against both defendants.
Grino remains free on $25,000 bond. His arraignment is set for Feb. 5.
After a court appearance Oct. 16, Grino said he would like to know what happened to his birds. During his preliminary hearing, Julie Summerfield, an investigator with the Oklahoma City Animal Welfare Division, testified the birds seemed to be fed and taken care of on Grino’s property. Asked to estimate the birds’ worth, she said more than $50,000 was a fair figure. Asked what happened to the game fowl that were seized, Summerfield said they were given to a rescue group, which was going to rehabilitate them and put them up for adoption.
Jazmin Yim, the OKC animal welfare department’s public information and marketing coordinator, told NonDoc on Dec. 17 that she would check on the birds’ whereabouts. She did not provided information prior to the publication of this article.
Grino said when he inquired about the status of his chickens a week after they were seized in May 2023, he was told he could have them back if he paid a $7,000 bill to cover the cost of feeding the birds during that time. He said that amount was excessive, arguing it would have cost him about $300 to feed his birds for a week.
“I mean, they took a lot out of me as far as trying to make a living and disrupt my family life,” Grino said Oct. 16. “I mean, we got animals just like anybody else, and we take care of our property. There’s a line between abuse and all that, so I get it. But there was no abuse there. I mean, I know how to take care of those chickens. Those are my property, and I take care of them. That’s my hobby, you know. That’s what I do. I had those bloodlines for a long time, and it’s just to preserve it and all that.”
Grino said he sold his birds to breeders who wanted them for “for food stock or show stuff.”
He said he found it odd that there were no problems when he had about 40 roosters in Oklahoma City, where he lived from 2008 until 2022 when he and his family moved to Newalla. Grino said he also has had trouble getting a job since his arrest on the cockfighting charges, which came after a traffic stop where an officer saw cages in the vehicle that he associated with the transport of game fowl.
“I’m trying to make it, trying to keep it together,” Grino said.
Grino once again appears to be raising game fowl. On Dec. 23, game fowl could be seen from the street on his property in Newalla.
Read affidavit alleging Grady County cockfighting
