Second man arrested in Florida horse killings

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) - A day laborer from Cuba admitted to police Tuesday that he helped slaughter two horses for their meat, a spokeswoman for the Miami-Dade Police Department said.

In both cases, the horses' throats were slit and meat was carved away while the animals were still alive, said the suspect, Santiago Cabrera, 19, according to affidavits filed to support the criminal complaint and arrest.

Police spokeswoman Edna Hernandez said another man, Luis Miguel Cordero, 18, also admitted to police that he was involved in one of the cases when he was picked up September 15. Two other men are being sought in the case.

"They are the pushers. They are the guys doing the dirty work for the leaders," said Richard "Kudo" Couto, an investigator for the South Florida Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

He added that "there are many more slaughters in South Florida," and police concede that underreporting of such animal cruelty crimes is a concern. Many butcherings are unreported, they say, sometimes because people do not want to get involved with law enforcement.

Cabrera described in detail his participation in the crimes, the affidavits say. According to the documents:

He told police that in the first incident, on July 26, the four men drove to a ranch in an unincorporated area of Dade County and climbed a gate to get into the property.

One of the men grabbed a horse by its halter and removed it from a stable. Cabrera said he held the horse while another man slit its throat. When the horse tried to flee, Cabrera said he and another man held the animal while the other men "used a metal pipe to break the horse's front legs, causing the horse to collapse to the ground."

"One of them grabbed the horse's legs while the other began to cut large portions of meat from its front legs, rear and back area," police quote Cabrera as saying.

Cabrera said during this time he was using his knees to hold the horse's head and neck down "because the horse was still alive."