Man high on bath salts kills neighbor's goat

West Virginia police have arrested a 19-year-old South Charleston, W.Va., man accused of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and slaying a young pygmy goat while wearing nothing but women's undergarments.

"This case is extremely bizarre," said Lt. Sean Crosier, of the Kanawha County Sheriff's Office. "It is unlawful to mistreat an animal in a cruel manner, and I certainly think it is very cruel for a human to have sexual relations of any kind with an animal."

According to police, this is how the story unfolded:

Lisa Powers told investigators that at around 3:15 a.m. Monday, a neighbor called her nephew and said that Bailey -- a female goat she had recently purchased for her 4-year-old grandson -- had been spotted inside her neighbor Mark Thompson's house.

"They told him that my goat was wandering around in Mark's house," Powers told The Charleston Gazette.

Powers' nephew and two friends then went to Thompson's house. When they were unable to locate the goat inside the home, they knocked on his bedroom door.

"He told them, 'Don't come in, I'm naked,'" Powers told the Gazette. "But they opened the door and he was standing there with his pants down ... and there was blood everywhere."

Thompson allegedly ran out of the house and into a nearby wooded area.

When police arrived on the scene, they were startled by the bloody crime scene they found, Crosier said. According to the criminal complaint, Bailey was lying dead in a pool of blood on the floor. The small animal, clad in only a pink collar, had blood oozing from a wound to her neck. A pornographic magazine photo lay nearby.

According to Crosier, Thompson allegedly "performed some sexual acts on the goat and also killed the goat."

While authorities investigated the crime scene, Thompson, who was "half naked, wearing female panties and a bra," came out of the woods and turned himself into police, Crosier added.

Thompson allegedly told police he was high on a dangerous new recreational drug intentionally mislabeled as "bath salts," which reportedly has effects similar to methamphetamine and cocaine.

"The argument of bath salts is just an excuse," Crosier said. "There had to be an underlying desire there somewhere, and maybe the bath salts decreased the inhibitions enough to make it happen, but the bath salts is a cop out."

Thompson has been charged with one count of animal cruelty. Additional charges may be forthcoming, pending the results of a necropsy that is being conducted by a local veterinarian.

In the meantime, Crosier said he would like it to be clear that the crime of bestiality occurs everywhere and not just in his state.

"Many people might think that it is common to West Virginia," the lieutenant said, "[But] it is common to every state in the Union."