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Forestville resident Laron Mecco “Frog” West, 46, pleaded guilty to conspiring to engage in dogfighting with other co-conspirators in Virginia, Washington, DC, and Maryland, federal prosecutors said.
According to court documents, between at least May 2015 and August 2020, West and others used a private messaging app they referred to as “The DMV Board” to discuss training fighting dogs, exchange videos about dogfighting, and coordinate fights without alerting law enforcement.
They also used the app to compare methods of killing dogs that lost fights and to circulate media reports about others who had been caught by police and minimize the chance they themselves were caught.
In June 2017, prosecutors say that West posted on the DMV Board that “we kill” fighting dogs that quit, and in October 2018, West posted on the DMV Board that dogs that failed to fight aggressively enough had been killed.
West wrote that he “loves to throw (the dogs) over the bridge and into the water.”
As part of his guilty plea, West admitted that in March 2018, he drove co-conspirator Charles Edward Williams, III, of Capitol Heights to a warehouse in Philadelphia to enter a dogfight. Later that year, Williams also warned members of the DMV Board to be sure to confirm the death of the dogs that they try to kill upon losing a fight.
Prosecutors said that over the summer, West, Williams, Fort Washington resident Michael Roy Hillard, 37, and four others were indicted for a dogfighting conspiracy involving the “DMV Board.”
Earlier this month, Williams and Hilliard pleaded guilty to the same conspiracy as West. The trial for three of the remaining co-conspirators is scheduled for Tuesday, December 6.
When they are sentenced in February 2023, West, Williams, and Hilliard will face up to five years in prison.
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