Boyd H. Fenton, right, learned his fate on Friday in the arson death of 30 racehorses. In the photo on the left, victim Mindy Findling Repko displays two of her beloved horses she lost in the fire. (Screenshots from WENY TV NEWS/YouTube)
An arsonist was sentenced to between seven and 15 years in state prison for starting a fire at the Tioga Downs Casino complex in New York that killed 30 racehorses and a cat and wounded a trainer trying to save the animals.
Boyd H. Fenton, 33, of Pennsylvania, learned his fate on Friday. He pleaded guilty in January to charges of arson, assault and 30 counts of interference with or injury to certain domestic animals, according to Tioga County District Attorney Kirk O. Martin.
“That’s what you did. You murdered our kids,” horse owner Mindy Findling Repko said directly to Fenton in court, central New York’s WSYR reported.
She described the trauma of losing five of her beloved horses, whom she described as her sons, as she cannot have any children of her own, the outlet reported.
As Fenton was escorted out of the courtroom, a woman in the audience said, “Enjoy your prison sentence, you low life,” WSYR reported.
As Law&Crime reported, on Nov. 9, Fenton entered the barn in Nichols, 150 northwest of New York City, and set it on fire in November. The fire prompted a response from police and multiple fire agencies. The trainer suffered second-degree burns and was hospitalized.
Repko told local affiliate WENY that when her husband, Jan, told her the unfathomable news, it destroyed her.
“I just looked at him [Jan] and I’m like, ‘What are you saying? How could they just be gone,”” Repko told the station. “I made my way to the couch and that’s where I stayed for … I couldn’t even tell you how long.”
Repko told the station that the loss has profoundly and permanently hurt her.
“The second anxiety attack … he [Jan] said, ‘I’m taking you to the hospital,’ and I said, ‘No, you’re not,’” she told the outlet. “I said to him, ‘Jan, I don’t care. If I die, I will go and be with my boys.’”
“I don’t even know how he [Fenton] can fathom what it is that he has done to us,” Repko said.
Some in the Tioga equestrian community feel the sentence is too lenient for the permanent damage done.
“This in no way ends the physical, emotional or monetary pain and suffering that will take so many more years get over, if ever,” Cindy Tuttle Allers wrote on Facebook. “My heart still hurts for one of the horses I knew personally, so I can’t imagine the grief the owners, trainers and their families experienced and are experiencing.”
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