Sunday, July 20, 2008
By Tommy Witherspoon
Waco 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.”

Read the entire article HERE.