Kristina Davis
The San Diego Union-Tribune
January 17, 2017
The Iowa farmer got the first call from his wife about 4:45 a.m., reporting that their mink were running all over the highway.
Keith Conrad got into his truck and couldn’t comprehend the carnage he found — dozens of mink turned into road kill, some with their backs broken but still alive. Hundreds more were running amok.
The 500 mink hadn’t escaped but had been freed by a pair of animal rights activists during a months-long, multistate campaign against the fur industry. By the day’s end, about 130 had died either on the highway or from heatstroke.
Other farms have similar stories of the death and loss caused by the scheme in 2013.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Larry Burns sentenced one of the vandals, Nicole Kissane, to 21 months in prison — three months longer than what prosecutors had recommended.
The San Diego federal judge months earlier had rejected a plea deal that would have obligated him to sentence her to six months, a term he said was unjust considering the crime was a “calculated, premeditated campaign of terror.”
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