Five alleged animal fighters die in 10 days

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
DETROIT, YAZOO, DELANO–Five alleged animal fighters
died in three separate incidents during the last 10 days of January
2011.
Detroit police responding to calls about gunshots and an
anonymous call saying that bodies could be found at a particular
address on the night of January 21 found the remains of three young
men after removing 11 pit bull terriers to gain access to the
building.

“A neighbor, who spoke anonymously out of fear for her life,
recalled the stench of dead dogs filling the air last summer after
dogfights when dog carcasses littered an abandoned house next door to
her,” reported Detroit Free Press staff writer Megha Satyanarayana.
“There was nothing but blood all over the basement and the walls,
she said of the abandoned house. The neighbor said the fight
conductors moved the operation from the abandoned house to a home
across the street, where the bodies were found,” Satyanarayana
continued.
The day after the killings, Satyanarayana wrote, “a dead
dog was lying in the backyard of that house, frozen and chained to a
dog house.”
Charged with shooting pit bull breeder Earl Riptoe, 43, at
a dogfight near Benton, Mississippi, seven miles east of Yazoo, on
January 28, Cedric Harvey, 33, of Jackson, Mississippi,
surrendered to police on February 7. Harvey was held in lieu of bond
of $800,000. Relatives claimed Riptoe was not himself a dogfighter,
but admitted that he bet on dogfights.
Jose Luis Ochoa, 35, was on January 30 fatally slashed
across his right calf by a gaff-wearing gamecock in rural Tulare
County, California. Ochoa was apparently preparing to “pit” the
bird when Tulare County sheriff’s deputies raided the cockfight.
Ochoa fled with other suspects, but was later captured and taken to
a hospital in Delano, in neighboring Kern County. He died about two
hours after suffering the injury.
Tulare County sheriff’s spokesperson Ray Pruitt told media
that it was not clear whether the delay in seeking medical attention
contributed to Ochoa’s death.
Two similar incidents killed two people within 17 days in
January 2003. Gamecock handler Elmer Mariano of Zamboanga, the
Philippines, had just strapped spurs to the legs of a cock in
preparation for a fight when the cock wrested one leg free and
fatally stabbed him in the groin. At Kampung Murni, Nabawan
district, Malaysia, cockfighter Tungkaling Ratu had also just
strapped the spurs to a cock when the bird escaped, fatally slashing
the thigh of his 12-year-old son Henrysius.