Merchant Cited for Cruelty to Turtles : Seizure: More than 300, some dead and the rest dehydrated, are taken from food store owner’s yard.

A Garden Grove merchant was cited for misdemeanor cruelty to animals after police found more than 300 turtles without food, water or shade in his back yard, police said Monday.

Kuy Chang Chhor, 46, the owner of Glory Food Market, said in an interview Monday that he stored the turtles in his back yard because there was no storage space at his market, where he sells turtle meat.

Animal control officers and police searched Chhor’s back yard in the 12400 block of Darnell Street on Saturday after a neighbor complained about a sour stench and stray turtles wandering in the neighborhood, Police Lt. John Woods said.

Lt. Marie Hulett, a spokeswoman for the Orange County animal control office, said officers found 320 marine turtles--some of them dead and the rest suffering from dehydration--crammed inside a makeshift pen in the back yard. About 40 of them had suffered lacerations or broken shells, she said.

The shells of the red-eared slider turtles, commonly sold as pets and kept in ponds or aquariums, measured between 5 and 10 inches in diameter, Hulett said.

One neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said when she found a turtle on her driveway Friday evening, she and her boyfriend took the creature to a nearby lake. When they returned home, they found another turtle crushed on the street.

“It was very unusual to suddenly see all these turtles all around here,” the neighbor said.

Another neighbor, Willa Walton, said she watched as officials filled four trucks with boxes of turtles Saturday. “I’d never seen so many turtles in my life,” she said.

Police, animal control officers and residents scoured the neighborhood for other strays, recovering turtles in seven neighboring yards, Woods said.

Chhor said turtle meat has become a fast-selling item at his store. He said he could not keep all the turtles at his market, so he brought them home.

Last month, health inspectors cited Chhor for storing turtles behind his market, said Robert Merryman, the county director of environmental health. According to county records, health inspectors had warned Chhor that he could not sell turtles if he continued to store them in the back lot of his business.

State health laws mandate that live animals cannot be kept near facilities that sell food.

Hulett said that turtles require special sanitary precautions since they are common carriers of bacteria such as salmonella.

“If a merchant sells turtles, he has to have salmonella warnings on the receipt and not have live animals near food,” Hulett said.

Turtle meat stored poorly could easily subject patrons to potentially fatal salmonellosis or food poisoning, Merryman said.

Meanwhile, the turtles seized from Chhor’s back yard were being kept in plastic wading pools at the animal shelter in Orange, Hulett said, and tested for salmonella.

The turtles will be put up for adoption, if they are deemed healthy. For information, call (714) 925-6848.