WALTERS – A city councilman named in criminal charges of cruelty to animals and obstructing an officer appeared in Cotton County District Court last week, pleaded not guilty, and was released on $500 cash bond.
The two misdemeanor charges filed against Bobby Lloyd Nance, 74, of Walters, pertain to alleged incidents that occurred nearly 10 months ago.
Nance is accused of “maliciously and cruelly” killing a female cat and several kittens “by placing cat food laced with rat poison (brodifacoum) out for animals” at his residence in July 2021. He also is accused of threatening Walters City Manager Douglas Shawn Strange in reference to investigation of the poisoning.
During his court appearance on April 25, Nance was ordered by Associate District Judge Michael Flanagan to have “no contact” with Haleigh Powell “during the pendency of this case or until further order of the court.”
Powell owned the cats that were poisoned, and her complaint to the Walters Police Department ultimately led to the criminal charges that District Attorney Kyle Cabelka filed against Nance.
The case is set for the court’s Aug. 12 misdemeanor docket. If convicted, Nance could be sentenced to a year’s incarceration in a county jail and/or a $1,000 fine for cruelty to animals and/or a $500 fine for obstructing an officer.
Joe Kimmons, a special agent with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, related in an affidavit that he was assigned to investigate “an allegation of official misconduct.” Nance was accused by Powell, his next-door neighbor, of placing pet food laced with poison in a tub on his front porch. Some of Powell’s cats died shortly afterward, the affidavit states.
After Powell notified the Walters Police Department, WPD Officer Tyler Hedges “came out and took photographs of the tub, and confiscated it” on July 12, 2021, Kimmons wrote.
Hedges also contacted Nance and interviewed him. Nance “advised he had some old cat food that he poured in a tub and left out on his driveway” but “denied putting poison in the cat food.”
A short time later, Kimmons continued, Hedges was summoned back to Powell’s residence. Powell said she overheard Nance and his wife arguing in their back yard; Mrs. Nance told him to “get the poison,” and Nance replied, “It’s gone.”
City Manager Strange told Kimmons that later that day he received a telephone call from Nance in which the city councilman warned him that investigation of the poisoning episode needed to “stop here on this porch right now. Do you understand what I’m telling you? This needs to stop here, and don’t need to go any further.”
After being read his Miranda rights, Nance was interviewed by Kimmons. Nance “was shown a photograph of the tub with cat food with green pellets in it,” the OSBI agent wrote in his affidavit. Nance told him the tub was “the same one he laid on his porch”; he claimed he “found the tub” a week earlier “out by the curb of his house” and “picked it up and put it closer to his house on the driveway.”
Nance “denied having a conversation with his wife” in their back yard on July 12 and denied telling Strange to “stop the investigation.”
On Jan. 23, 2022, The tub of cat food was submitted to the Oklahoma Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory for analysis. The contents tested positive for brodifacoum, which is used to eradicate rodents.