Seafood Dealer Accused of Cruelty in Turtles’ Deaths

Investigators who opened the refrigerator at a seafood warehouse this summer discovered they had arrived too late to save 643 turtles choked in burlap bags or crushed in plastic containers.

Red-eared turtles, sliders, Mississippi mud turtles, snapping turtles and others were found dead or dying, maggot-infested, with gaping wounds and missing limbs. But 724 more were still alive.

On Tuesday, the owner of a Canoga Park seafood company who authorities say left the turtles there was charged in Van Nuys Municipal Court with a dozen counts of animal cruelty, neglect and other offenses.

Los Angeles Deputy City Atty. Don Cocek filed the misdemeanor charges against Mark Rommel Osterholt, 28, of West Hills. If convicted, Osterholt could face a maximum of five years in jail and $50,000 in fines, Cocek said.

“I’ve had some pretty gross animal cruelty cases before, but in this one the number of animals involved is amazing,” Cocek said.

Cocek said that on May 19, when a foul odor began wafting from a van parked at the apartment complex where Osterholt lives, residents asked construction workers to open the van and peer inside.

What they found foreshadowed the discovery in Westminster: 1,112 dead and dying turtles in burlap sacks, Cocek said. Animal rescue workers from the Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Southern California Humane Society removed the dead turtles and recovered more than 900 others suffering from dehydration.

That same day, Cocek said, a health department inspector in Santa Clara County received a fax from Osterholt requesting permission to sell turtles in that Northern California county. The inspector called officials with the California Department of Fish and Game, Cocek said, and found out that Osterholt did not hold a valid permit to import animals into the state.

According to Cocek, Osterholt had turtles flown or trucked from Arkansas. A message on Osterholt’s telephone answering machine asks that callers from Arkansas leave their numbers on his pager. Osterholt could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

The trail then led SPCA investigators to Westminster in August, where the owner of a seafood warehouse company, which they have not named, complained to the agency about the vast numbers of turtles a customer had left in one of his freezers.

“They were in plastic containers, in a refrigerator, in forced hibernation,” Cocek said. “The turtles at the bottom of the bins had suffocated or drowned. There were fractured necks, crushed shells, distorted legs and missing eyes and limbs. The majority of the turtles were underweight and emaciated.”

The turtles, which ranged from less than three inches to about 10 inches from head to tail, had strained necks and bulging eyes, Cocek said. Some of the turtles were in sacks in the freezer portion of the refrigerator, and the bags also contained blood, feces and turtle eggs as well, he said.

“These turtles are sold for food, certainly. However, there are limits to how much pain and suffering you can put an animal under,” he said.

In the course of their investigation, authorities also uncovered an incident that occurred in November, linking Osterholt to a Fish and Game warden’s discovery of snapping turtles at a market in Los Angeles’ Chinatown. The market owner told inspectors he had bought the turtles--which are non-native, carnivorous and illegal to possess in the state--from Osterholt and Sons Seafood Co. in Canoga Park, Cocek said.

Osterholt is scheduled to be arraigned on Oct. 25.

Turtles that survived the Westminster refrigerator were taken to a shelter where their body temperatures were returned to normal, and they were force-fed and given antibiotics.