Campaigners held a protest outside a court yesterday morning (Friday 19 December) demanding that two men be jailed for blowing up a sheep with fireworks at Ditchling Beacon.
They gathered outside Lewes Crown Court “demanding justice for the horrific acts of torture and abuse inflicted on a sheep in November 2023 by two former students from Plumpton College”.
It was the third time that protesters had gathered outside what they had hoped was a sentencing hearing but the case was adjourned again.
Leighton Ashby, 22, of Beckett Road, Ashford, Kent, and Oakley Hollands, 20, of Mussenden Lane, Horton Kirby, Kent, both admit causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal, at Ditchling Beacon.
In November 2023, they carried out “a brutal assault” leading to the death of a sheep and knew or ought reasonably to have known that what they did would kill the sheep.
An earlier court hearing was told that 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 a previous hearing at Brighton Magistrates’ Court that the pair began by punching and kicking the sheep 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. His request was granted.
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.
Yesterday, the case was adjourned until Monday 12 January.
