11-year-old girl awarded $300K settlement from police who seized and butchered her pet goat



Thursday, November 7, 2024 -A California girl who sued police for seizing her beloved pet goat, which was then slaughtered, has been awarded $300,000 in a settlement. 

Jessica Long’s daughter — who was just 9 years old when her goat, Cedar, was hauled off to the slaughter in 2022 — reached the settlement Friday, Nov. 1, with the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office and several of its officers, Courthouse News Service reported. 

The mother sued the department in 2023 a year after officers traveled about 500 miles roundtrip to seize the goat without a warrant, all in the name of a state fair’s supposed rules that had no legal binding. 



Her daughter was given Cedar in April 2022 and tended to him daily for months with plans to raise him for a livestock auction at the Shasta District Fair as part of a youth program. 

But when Cedar was handed over to the fair around July of that year, the girl found she couldn’t part with the animal — especially since the auction he was slotted for was selling the animals for meat. 

“After the auction, [the daughter] would not leave Cedar’s side.” the lawsuit read, according to Courthouse News. 

She] loved Cedar and the thought of him going to slaughter was something she could not bear. While sobbing in his pen beside him, [she] communicated to her mother she didn’t want Cedar to go to slaughter.” 

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