2 weeks Ago
SUMMERVILLE — Jaclyn Cesari and her daughter stood with kibble in their hands as they stared down at the dead cat. They scanned the woods next to a feeding station for the colony. Silence held the air on Oct.
6 instead of purrs, meows and chirps. Everywhere Cesari, 45, and Piper turned, they found another deceased cat in similar condition — bloated, dried blood coming from the mouth, nose and eyes, and laying in vomit. One after another.
They found 13 in all. “At 15, for her (Piper) to see that, I told her, ‘I want you to know not all people are like this,' ” Cesari told The Post and Courier. “This was the evilest thing I’ve ever seen.
” The cats, they discovered, had been dead for days in what the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office would later say was a mass poisoning of a managed cat colony along Drop Off Drive, a frontage road along Interstate 26. Three opossums were also killed. 5 charged in poisoning, torture of 13 community cats in Summerville The colony had lived at the location for more than a decade when it was still Greene's Service Center, said Mike Greene, the colony’s longtime caretaker.
Greene closed this auto garage and sold the land in January, but he secured a provision from the buyer that allowed the cats to stay. Still, he spent $175 a week on cat food for the colony. "‘God, you must love cats,' " he said.
"I heard that for years." Cesari and other volunteers found the dead cats clustered around paper plates and empty tuna cans. Two managed to walk into nearby bushes and weeds before collapsing.
Most collapsed in place after consuming food laced with Temik, a name brand for aldicarb, a potent and illicit pesticide previously used on cotton fields, police said. Two other feeding locations serving a colony of about 50 cats were left untouched, Greene said. A majority of the colony had been vaccinated, chipped and neutered since he sold the property.
At the tainted site, water dishes contained with a milky substance. Lab tests found it to be a powerful fungicide, Captan 10, said John DiFalco, a detective in the sheriff’s office. Captan would not have been enough to kill the cats, he said.
Cats eat at a feeding station for a cat colony on Drop Off Road in Summerville. The deaths were not instant but "agonizing," DiFalco would later say. At least one of the poisons used was old, lowering its potency and contributing to prolonged deaths, he said.
The Humane Society of the United States and the Charleston Animal Society paid for forensic necropsies on the cats at labs in Columbia and Michigan State University, he said. The actions were part of a criminal conspiracy to purge the colony, DiFalco said. The sheriff’s office charged five people in connection with the mass poisoning.
Among those charged were Andrew George Dock, 28, a West Ashley High School welding teacher, and Charles Waylon Ulmer, 45, an Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College welding program director. The alleged premediated nature of the killings heightens the severity of poisonings, said Joe Elmore, president of the Charleston Animal Society. "It’s one of the more severe I have seen," he said.
"Any of (animal abuse cases) that are premediated are on the more heinous side of the spectrum." Weeks before the cats died, Michael Jeffrey Kemmerlin Jr. handed Dock a Jiff peanut butter jar with a skull and cross bones etched on its cap.
The words “Hot Sauce” had been scrawled on the side, according to an arrest warrant. Kemmerlin’s “hot sauce” was an old batch of Temik he acquired while working on his family’s Ridgeville farm. The 30-year-old had been a licensed pesticide applicator, giving him access to a poison that the federal government banned in 2018, according to the warrant.
On Sept. 24, he knowingly supplied it to Dock, who lived next to the colony, police said. Clementine, a member of a colony living on Drop Off Drive in Summerville, is seen in an undated picture.
The colony was poisoned on Oct. 4, 2024, resulting in the deaths of 13 cats and three opossums. Temik was intended to be used for mites, insects and nematodes on crops and not for killing animals seen as a nuisance, according to the manufacturer’s instructions and the EPA.
Temik's danger comes from how it can cascade through food chains and contaminate water supplies. If an animal, such as a coyote or bird, ate one of the cats it, too, would die, DiFalco said. “That was never taken into consideration,” DiFalco said in court.
The poisonings took place on Oct. 4, according to police. The cats remained where they dropped until being discovered Oct.
6, after which police were called. Clemson's Department of Pesticide Regulation is investigating the use of poisons in the case, police said. Dock has been placed on administrative leave by the Charleston County School District pending the investigation’s outcome, according to the school district.
The tech school declined to comment on Ulmer’s employment status. Police began investigating Dock after a tip came in that he had previously complained about the colony, calling animal control and the sheriff’s office. They obtained text messages from Dock and his family that implicated Kemmerlin, along with his own wife and mother, according to arrest warrants.
His mother, Laura Mary Dock, 61, helped create the plan to poison the colony and how to avoid detection by police, DiFalco said. She told them to use cheap tuna, where to buy it and to keep their dog away from the poison. Sara Rose Dock, his 23-year-old wife, her mother-in-law's direction to purchase the tuna used in the poisoning.
New policy would prohibit feeding of animals at Hilton Head airport. Workers ask 'What about the cats?' Laura Dock, Sara Dock and Kemmerlin are charged with one count of criminal conspiracy. In addition to conspiracy, Andrew Dock and Ulmer face 13 counts of felony ill treatment of animals with a torture enhancement.
Each animal abuse charge carries a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison. “All of them conspired to commit this act,” Difalco said during a Dec. 5 bond hearing.
Mike Wells, an attorney for the Dock family, said Andrew Dock had not physically poisoned the cats himself. “We don’t make light of anything that has happened,” he told Berkeley County Judge O’tis Prioleau. Volunteers at the colony told The Post and Courier that Dock never contacted them or left them a note before the cats were poisoned.
Cesari said some people in the townhome development also were feeding the cats. Cesari said she encountered Andrew Dock on Oct. 6 after police arrived.
Cesari, her daughter and other volunteers searched for more dead cats near the fence dividing the property from the townhome development. She said Dock made comments about the cats being a nuisance and asking if she owned the property. “The cats were accustomed to feeding from people.
There was this trust with them, and the thought they came up to them with poison...
,“ Cesari said, her words trailing off. Greene said he thinks the entire colony would have been killed if the accused knew of the other feeding locations. Greene became responsible for the cats as people abandoned animals near his business on Drop Off Drive.
He said he tried to spay and neuter the colony but said his efforts were stymied by running his business and the lack of regularly operating clinics in Berkeley County. A tuxedo cat named Oreo is seen inside of a trap following the Oct. 4, 2024, poisoning of their colony in Summerville which killed 13 cats.
Volunteers removed and relocated the survivor cats. When he closed his business and entered semi-retirement, he had more time, he said. Volunteers, such as Cesari, discovered the colony and led a push to trap, neuter, vaccinate, chip and return the cats.
Cesari said the colony had not had a new litter in about eight months. The surviving couple dozen cats were relocated after the poisonings. Elmore, president of the Charleston Animal Society, said relocation is a last resort.
"The cats really need to be in danger because the odds are that they won’t survive a year," he said. The relocation effort involved Lowcountry Trap Neuter Release Network and area animal welfare nonprofits. Most were sent to a feral cat sanctuary, Hangry's Hideout , in Cottageville, said Stephanie VanEllis, president of Forgotten Paw of the South.
Some were taken to Pet Helpers on James Island for spaying and neutering, said Carol Linville, the clinic's founder. Volunteers said Linville played a key role in helping the relocated animals as well as offering a reward for information..
