Two beloved pigs were shot and almost turned into meat after a butcher took a wrong turn and arrived at a family’s hobby farm.
Natalie and Nathan Gray rushed to their property in Port Orchard, Washington, after their surveillance system alerted them to intruders around 1:30 p.m. on May 1.
They arrived to find Betty and Patty, their two-year-old Kunekune pigs, dead and a butcher and his friend about to lift the carcasses to drain the blood.
The butcher realized he had made a terrible mistake, but the pigs were dead and he offered to give them the meat for free as compensation. This didn’t go down well.
“(They) cruelly offered to kill Betty and Patty for free, as if (the Grays) were even thinking about eating them,” reads a lawsuit filed by the family.
Beloved pigs Betty and Patty were shot and nearly turned into meat after a butcher took a wrong turn and arrived at a family’s hobby farm.
Natalie Gray said she saw them in an ad for a local breeder and thought they would be perfect for her family’s pet-only Gray Acres farm.
The shocking mix-up was detailed in the legal complaint filed by the family in Washington Superior Court in Kitsap County on May 30.
Local farmer George Meats’ Jonathan Hines had been asked to slaughter two pigs at a farm down the road where the Grays lived.
Hines’ client was absent, so he asked the butcher to come to the property, kill the pigs behind the barn, and take their bodies for processing.
But Hines, 29, and his friend Dillon Baker, 30, whom he recruited to help, put the wrong direction into the GPS and turned right instead of left.
They drove to the Gray farm, broke into the pen the pigs share with eight ducks, and shot Betty and Patty; The gunshots echoed through the family’s camera system.
The lawsuit claimed Hines, Baker and farmer George Meats “recklessly inflicted serious and serious emotional distress” along with gross negligence and trespassing.
The family demanded compensation that “represents the intrinsic value of Betty and Patty.”
“The law treats Betty and Patty the same as if they were a Golden Retriever or a Norwegian Forest Cat,” said their attorney Adam Karp.
Natalie said her two daughters, ages 12 and 9, were so devastated that the eldest cried when she found out and her sister refuses to take in any more animals for fear they will be killed too.
Natalie said she was distraught to see her pigs suddenly die after caring for them and her daughters were inconsolable.
Natalie said her two daughters, ages 12 and 9, were so devastated that the eldest cried when she found out and her sister refused to take any more animals for fear they would be killed too.
The lawsuit called Betty and Patty ‘beloved pet pigs for almost three years’ who were adopted in March 2022 to join cats, dogs, ducks and a chicken.
Natalie said she saw them in an ad for a local breeder and thought they would be perfect for her family’s pet-only Gray Acres farm.
‘They were adorable. They were so cute. They were the size of a small dog. We haven’t had them before. Not eating meat, I heard they were like dogs and very fun to have, and I wanted my daughters to have pigs,” she said. Kiro7.
“I would go out every morning and spend time with them and make sure they got the care they needed before school and I would feed them, give them fresh water and make sure their bathroom was full.”
Natalie said she was distraught to see them suddenly dead after caring for them and that her daughters were inconsolable.
‘I turned the corner and both Patty and Betty were dead in the pen. And Betty already had chains around her feet. I called the police,” she said.
‘Now my youngest daughter doesn’t want that (new animals). She said, well, what if someone comes? I don’t want that to happen like it did to Patty and Betty.’
The butcher realized he had made a terrible mistake, but the pigs were dead and he offered to give them the meat for free as compensation.
Patty and Betty are buried on the property along with the family’s other deceased pet livestock, with small headstones.
Kitsap County sheriff’s deputies responded to Natalie’s 911 call and, according to an incident report, found there was “no malice” on the part of the butcher.
Hines told police he “made a mistake by not marking the address on his (Google) maps,” according to the report, and admitted that he “did everything” and that Baker was “just there helping him” when he shot the pigs.
Hines said his heart dropped when Nathan and Natalie confronted him and he realized he was at the wrong farm.
‘Not know what to do. “I just sat there in shock,” he told the Washington Post.
But he defended himself by saying that he would not have mixed the properties if the Grays had left the door closed.
Hines dragged the pigs into the woods behind the farm and dumped the blood-stained dirt into a trash can.
He then went to slaughter the pigs he was supposed to kill that day.
Patty and Betty are buried on the property along with the family’s other deceased pet livestock, with small headstones.
