Cruelty Charge Won’t Be Filed in Skunk Case

A woman who trapped and killed skunks by leaving them in the heat will not be charged with cruelty to animals because investigators found no evidence of a crime, police said Friday.

Lt. Tom Christian of the Brea Police Department, which patrols Yorba Linda, said Jan Bowers apparently had removed her metal traps before police and Orange County Department of Animal Control investigators arrived at her home Thursday night.

Bowers did not admit to trapping and killing the skunks, but she promised not to do it in the future, Christian said.

Bowers told The Times in an article this week that she began killing the animals, which had overrun her hillside home, only when she could get no help from the city or county officials. Because of that article, police and animal control officials began their investigation.

During a visit to the home Thursday morning, investigators said, they saw one trap in place but no animal inside.

“We found nothing that would corroborate that a crime took place, so there is nothing to prosecute,” Christian said. “Newspaper articles are hearsay evidence and cannot be the basis of a criminal complaint, nor can they be used to obtain a search warrant.”

Bowers could not be reached for comment Friday.

Bowers told The Times that after she began losing sleep and her daughter became ill from the skunk odor, she began placing up to four metal traps baited with peanut butter on her property. She said she originally placed the traps in the shade and called the Animal Control Department to pick the animals up. But the department didn’t send its officers to her house for four days and the animals were dead when they arrived, she said.

She then moved the traps into the sun to kill the animals quicker, she said.