Miranda’s Rescue Case Sparks Outcry at Supes Meeting

Hilary Graham

Demands for action against Shannon Miranda, whose animal rescue operation is being investigated by the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office, were voiced to the Board of Supervisors during a lengthy public comment period that also included some who defended him.

Though a minority of speakers warned against assuming guilt, many described Miranda as an animal killer with a profit motive.

“Shannon Miranda took advantage of this community and used us in the worst possible way,” said one.

Miranda’s shelter, Miranda’s Rescue, has been a community fixture for 25 years and he’s been honored by the state assembly and the Red Cross.

But allegations that he takes in animals on a paid basis and kills them to reap profit have been ongoing for years.

The Lost Coast Outpost did a deep dive into those accusations in a March 26, 2014 report and labeled them as a “smear campaign” in its headline. The accuser profiled in the report was found to have credibility issues.

But now the Sheriff’s Office is in the midst of an investigation and in a May 20 statement, says it “remains committed to pursuing every available lead.” The statement also “asks the public to avoid speculation and to rely on official updates from law enforcement.”

Jennifer Raymond

One of two women instrumental to the probe’s initiation is Jennifer Raymond, who identified herself to supervisors as “one of the people who dug eight dead dogs out of the mass grave on Shannon Miranda’s property.”

Raymond said she’s “very concerned about the remaining animals in Shannon Miranda’s that are being left under his control” and questioned why they haven’t been taken elsewhere.

“When a raid is done with allegations of child abuse, the children are removed from the home,” she said. “When stolen property is recovered in a raid, the stolen property is removed. When illegal drugs are found during a raid, they are removed. Why were these animals not removed?”

Jenna Moore, whose trail cameras recorded Miranda’s actions, said, “For more than 20 years, members of this community raised concerns, filed complaints, shared stories, and sounded alarms regarding Miranda’s rescue.”

She said she and Raymond “felt compelled to take matters in our own hands” because of non-response to their requests for action and the case has “exposed major gaps in our system.”

Other speakers also said they’ve been voicing unheeded concerns about Miranda’s Rescue. One called him “the worst kind of human.”

The investigation’s scope includes Miranda’s intake of animals from various shelters and a Bay Area vet tech said she’s familiar with one of the dead dogs Raymond dug up and video-recorded.

“I spoke with a friend of mine who works at Berkeley Animal Services about Charmaine, who is one of the dogs that was found in the pit and I know that she was a friendly dog, she was not an aggressive dog, she was not a bite risk,” she said. “She was only a year-and-a-half old. They sent her up here thinking she would stand a better chance as a big rambunctious dog to maybe find a place with more land that she could live. They loved her and they thought she was getting a chance.”

Saying she’s “all for fairness and investigation,” she said she’s “only up here asking that pressure be put on to run a thorough, fair investigation of Mr. Miranda – I want to know where the dogs are.”

Other speakers called for enforcement of Miranda’s Rescue’s county permit, which the Times-Standard recently reported to be out of compliance for many years.

But two speakers spoke in support of Miranda’s Rescue.

Debbie Scheffler, a former Miranda’s Rescue board president, said Miranda is “an upstanding person” and “I have never ever seen anything that would have made me think that anything was wrong.”

Hilary Graham described her experience of knowing Miranda “since he was a young teenager” and warned against prejudgment.

“I have watched him dedicate every single day of his adulthood to save animals – not dozens, not hundreds but thousands of animals who would not be alive today if not for him,” she said. “And what is happening to him right now is nothing short of a lynch mob, a rush to judgment fueled by misinformation, fueled by personal grudges and fueled by people who should know better.”

She added: “I have seen Shannon take in animals no one else wanted – the old ones, the scared ones, the broken ones. He didn’t do it for praise. He didn’t do it for money. He did it because he could not stand to see them die, that is who he is, that is the truth of his life’s work. And yet today he is being buried under lies that have been repeated and weaponized by people like Jenna Moore and Jennifer Raymond.”

Graham described Miranda as “a man being destroyed before a single charge has been filed, before an investigation has been completed.”

When the public comment period ended, Board Chair Mike Wilson explained that “none of this is to be discussed by the board at this time because it’s a non-agendized item.”

Earlier: Paid to Save Them, Accused of Killing Them: The Investigation of Miranda’s Rescue