By LNP, Lancaster, Pa.
A Conoy Township man has been found guilty of animal cruelty for abandoning over 20 pets inside a home he’d been evicted from in 2023.
Following a three-day trial earlier this month, a Lancaster County jury found Eric Lee Wise Werner, 40, guilty of 17 counts of animal cruelty.
Werner along with his mother Mary M. Good, 58, and her boyfriend, Jadden Alexander Moore, 22, were evicted from their home in the 100 block of Falmouth Road in September 2023. When they left the home Werner, Good and Moore left behind 21 pets, including cats, domestic rats and a snake and made no attempt to inform township officials that the animals were left behind.
A month later, Humane Society officers with the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals were called to the home, where they discovered the abandoned animals in deplorable conditions. One cat had to be euthanized due to it suffering from hypothermia.
Good later contacted investigators and informed them that dead animals were being kept in freezers. Investigators later pulled the bodies of 35 kittens, nine cats, three rabbits, five guinea pigs, a rat and a mouse out of two freezers on the property.
Good and Moore pleaded guilty to aggravated cruelty to animals and other charges in April 2025. Good was sentenced to up to 23 months in prison followed by four years of probation. Moore was sentenced to two years probation.
Werner’s charges were the only ones to go to trial. The jury returned a guilty verdict after 2 1/2 hours of deliberation, according to the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office.
Judge Todd Brown, who presided over the trial, is scheduled to sentence Werner at the conclusion of a pre-sentence investigation. Werner is free on $150,000 unsecured bail while he awaits his sentencing.
