Warren woman charged under city’s new bestiality law

Staff report

WARREN

An arrest warrant has been issued for a woman accused under Warren’s new bestiality ordinance.

Amber Finney, 33, of Ward Avenue Northwest, is not in custody, and details of the alleged offense were not available Tuesday.

But police have charged her with engaging in sexual conduct with animals, a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in the Trumbull County Jail.

She lives on the same street as the man who prompted Warren City Council to pass a bestiality ordinance last June – Salvador Rendon, 61.

But the woman charged Tuesday lives at a different Ward Street address.

Rendon, who no longer lives on Ward Avenue, was convicted earlier this year of cruelty to animals for having sex with his daughter’s dogs.

Rendon served 30 days in the jail and was placed on five years’ probation after his April conviction in Warren Municipal Court.

Animal advocate Jason Cooke of Boardman encouraged Warren lawmakers to enact a bestiality law, the first in Ohio, after Rendon’s case drew wide attention. Prosecutors were able to show animal cruelty in the Rendon case because of the injury suffered by the dog, but under the new law, no injury is required, only a finding that the person had sex with the animal, Cooke said.

Ohio has a law against pending that goes into effect 90 days after Gov. John Kasich signed it last December. However, Cooke said, the penalties in Warren’s law are stronger.

The state law makes a violation a second-degree misdemeanor and prohibits perpetrators from owning an animal for only five years; Warren’s law makes the offense a first-degree misdemeanor and allows for an indefinite prohibition for owning animals.