Two western North Carolina men who bred and trained fighting dogs then entered them in deadly matches were sentenced to prison on Thursday by a federal judge.
Laddie Dwayne McMillian, 47, of Tryon and Derrick Twitty, 48, of Mill Spring, will serve 16 months and six months, respectively. Both pleaded guilty to dog-fighting charges in October.
As previously reported by The Charlotte Observer, the business partners were indicted in June after an investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Inspector General and the Polk County Sheriff’s Office.
Prosecutors say McMillian bred, trained and fought dogs for 15 years. His indictment covered illegal activity dating back to 2017. Twitty became his partner in “Mass Destruction Kennels” in 2020.
In return for the guilty pleas, prosecutors dropped all but two of the charges in the 12-count indictment.
Filings in the case provided gruesome details on one of the country’s last clandestine blood sports, which is illegal in every state yet kills upward of 16,000 dogs annually.
In the N.C. case, significant amounts of money often changed hands — with $500 stud fees and purses for individual fights of up to $5,000.
In court documents, McMillian sounds almost gleeful at times describing the carnage, which mostly occurred in Polk County, some 80 miles west of Charlotte.
In a May 2020 email, McMillian raved about one of his younger animals, “Senorita Maria,” after she had taken part in a short fight to display her abilities, known by dog-fighters as a “roll.”
“First roll was Saturday, she didn’t even know what the f--- was going on!!!!” he wrote. “Broke the other bitch leg, and popped bleeders everywhere!!!!! All this in 5mins!!!!”
The pair’s prized fighter was a pit bull named “Slick Rick.” In January 2022, McMillian beamed over Rick’s recent mauling of a dog belonging to McMillian’s cousin.
“23 mins, curred him out,” McMillian wrote. “Slick was getting ready to do him in and my cousin stopped it for whatever reason, just put a bullet in his head.”
Rick’s seat on the throne was short-lived. After years of fighting, the 4-year-old pit bull died in January 2022, several weeks after his last bout, prosecutors said.
“The life and death of this dog reflects the defendants’ extraordinary cruelty, abuse, and mistreatment of animals for entertainment,” Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division in Washington said in a statement released after the sentencing.
The ghoulish appeal of dog fighting stretches across the Carolinas, to rural and urban communities alike.
Last May, a Gastonia man was charged with 60 felonies after police raided what appeared to be a dog-fighting operation outside his home, the Observer previously reported. Some 30 dogs were seized.
In November 2021, a federal judge sent a Concord man to prison for six years on dog fighting and weapons charges. According to prosecutors, most of Delontay Moore’s dogs were in “dire condition,” from severe scarring and untreated and infected bite wounds to broken bones, internal injuries and infected ears that had been improperly cropped.
In September, a small army of state and federal law enforcement authorities seized 300 dogs in York and five other South Carolina counties, the largest dog-fighting bust in that state’s history.
On Thursday, Chief U.S. District Judge Martin Reidinger of Asheville took steps to keep McMillian and Twitty from fighting dogs for the foreseeable future.
As part of their sentences, the judge ordered the pair to serve two years of supervised release — a period after they get out of prison when they are banned from possessing any dogs.
