MANSFIELD, L.A. – The son-in-law of the mayor of Logansport, Louisiana, is suspected of poisoning neighbors’ dogs with pesticides injected in hamburger meat he fed to them in April.
Billy Alger, a former alderman, has not yet been arrested, but district attorney Richard Z. Johnson told the Shreveport Times newspaper Friday that he is due to appear in front of a grand jury in court next week.
Reports said that Alger threw balls of hamburger meat mixed with gopher bait on the lawns in his neighborhood. One neighbor conducted a necropsy on their dog to find strychnine, a poisonous white powder typically used to kill rodents in the dog’s system. The Louisiana Brand Commission and the state Department of Agriculture and Forestry then dug up the other dogs’ bodies to find the same substance was present in all of them.
Johnson told the Shreveport Times that he would ask the grand jury to consider multiple counts of felony grade cruelty to animals but the final decision is up to the panel, which has been called into special session to hear Alger’s case. Each count of cruelty to animals is punishable with up to 10 years in prison.
Alger, the son-in-law of Mayor Dennis Freeman, served on the Logansport Town Council from January 1997 through December 2000.
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