A group of campaigners held a protest outside a court this morning (Monday 10 November) demanding that two men be jailed for blowing up a sheep with fireworks at Ditchling Beacon.
The crowd gathered outside Lewes Crown Court just before 9am “demanding justice for the horrific acts of torture and abuse inflicted on a sheep in November 2023 by two former students from Plumpton College”.
One of the organisers said: “Leighton Ashby and Oakley Hollands, both from wealthy farming families in Kent, entered guilty pleas to the charge of animal cruelty back in August.
“At the sentencing hearing in October, the case was referred to the higher court. The pair were due to appear before a judge at Lewes Crown Court this morning.”
The hearing has since been adjourned until Friday 19 December when Ashby, 22, of Beckett Road, Ashford, Kent, and Hollands, 20, of Mussenden Lane, Horton Kirby, Kent, will learn their fate.
The organiser said: “There has been an outpouring of emotion at these crimes on social media. As such, there was a clear need for a protest where members of the public could express their anger.”
“The sentencing hearing was the obvious opportunity though … whether it has been postponed, the protest is going ahead regardless.”
Rob Smith, from Ashford, the home town of Leighton Ashby, helped to organise the protest on Facebook, said: “This crime has shocked our community.
“Yet it also exposes what we know to be true, which is that cruelty and abuse is endemic within animal farming.
“Investigation after investigation has shown the same thing: that farmers regard the animals in their care as mere objects, a class of living assets.
“All they care about is getting the animals to the slaughterhouse in a saleable condition.”
A protestor, who did not wish to be identified, said: “We want them jailed to serve an albeit disproportionate justice for the ewe, to protect their future victims and send a message to other would-be animal abusers that the crown takes such acts of barbarity seriously.
“Anything less than prison would send the wrong message.”
Ashby and Hollands invited two other students from Plumpton College to Ditchling Beacon to see what they said was a dead badger.
But when the two other students arrived, they were instead confronted by Ashby and Hollands brutally assaulting a sheep, finally lighting powerful fireworks in its body.
The witnesses, Henry Savell and Leila Goodwin-Crisell, were horrified and reported the pair. An investigation subsequently found video footage of the brutal 30-minute attack on their phones.
District judge Amanda Kelly said: “It’s hard to comprehend how you could both inflict such brutal cruelty on a defenceless animal. It was sadistic and utterly barbaric.”
She added: “Videos were taken and shared. The sound of laughter can be heard in those videos which is mind-boggling and suggests there was some sort of glorification of what was being done.
“There were attempts to cover up and to involve others in what was done. You asked other young people to lie about what happened.
“You offered to pay someone else to help you remove the sheep’s body.”
Joe Lewis, prosecuting, told Brighton Magistrates’ Court last month that the attack happened on the evening of Monday 6 November 2023.
The pair began by punching and kicking the sheep, he said, before smashing its head against a fence, causing a critical injury.
Mr Lewis said that they inserted a firework into the sheep’s mouth and then its anus, mutilating the carcass.
He said that the case should be sent to the crown court for sentencing, where a greater prison sentence could be passed.
Mr Lewis added that Hollands’s phone contained a still of a fox which had been killed and dismembered.
He said: “This shows cruelty was not confined to livestock but extended to wild animals. The recovered media demonstrates a pattern of repeated cruelty to animals.”
Ashby had also hidden the sheep’s ear tags in the communal toilets of the college, he said, adding: “The crown says that those were kept as trophies.”
Tim Stirmey, defending Ashby, asked for a psychiatric report to be commissioned for his client who had not been forthcoming in interviews with probation for pre-sentence reports.
Robert Gregory, defending Hollands, said that his client had broken down while discussing the case before the previous hearing.
The district judge agreed that the case should be sent to the crown court.
These vile men should get the highest sentence possible for the vile crimes they have committed against an innocent vulnerable sheep as well as other sadistict act against animals.
What sort of men are they and who will be their next victims, your children, pets who knows ?
Please may people like these two be kept off the streets and fields and tears and evidence of distress is nothing compared to what the animal suffered and their distress must be of no consequence!
What about halal?
Are you conflating this sadistic act (and likely others) with a legal (although imo unnecessarily barbaric) practice to provide kosher food?
Just a minor point but halal is an Islamic practice not Jewish…
I was being sardonic as I thought that the original comment had sinister undertones..
Quite right. Kosher slaughter does NOT allow the animal to be stunned before being killed, whereas Halal does, although it is not mandatory.
Absolutely Disgusting there is No Excuse for the Evil sycopaths,Jail is the Only way to protect our wildlife and the public from these scum. They Also be Banned from Ever having Any Animal.
This is very sad and disturbing, especially when you consider that these young men would be spending their lives working with animals. You would think that the young men would have an affinity and compassion for the animals. Instead the exact opposite! Thank you for your journalistic work.
They shouldn’t be allowed on the streets. Aside from the horrific nature of the crime itself, they thought nothing of telling and showing others. With that sort of mindset, who knows what they could do in the future?
The uncomfortable truth for the industry is that the real breakthrough for animal welfare comes when we move away from intensive farming altogether. High-volume, high-pressure systems create the conditions in which cruelty can be hidden, normalised, or dismissed as “standard practice”. In genuinely higher-welfare, transparent systems, there is far less room for abuse — and no hiding place for those inclined towards it.
Until that shift happens, the public is entitled to clear accountability. Which agricultural colleges genuinely place animal welfare at the core of their courses, and what evidence shows that this education actually reduces cruelty in practice? Claims are not enough. Welfare must be embedded, assessed, and proven, not retrospectively defended when failures come to light.
An industry that slaughters animals with impunity will always attract psychopaths