As you recall from earlier in the year, I had reported about the Knox County citations from October and November 2019 of Animal Cruelty charges on Knox County School Board Member Mike McMillan and cattle on his East Knox County farm.
I was able to receive the incidents reports (through open record requests) before court appearances, but NOT the body cams. I reported those incidents reports in previous posts.
On March 10, 2020, after two court delays (January 16 and February 6) McMillan was in court with his Attorney Jed McKeehan, who authors a weekly column in the Focus publication owned by Steve Hunley. On March 10, the Knox County District Attorney apparently offered and McMillan ultimately accepted to plead Guilty to one animal cruelty citation, pay a $50 fine and pay court cost on two citations. I was in the courtroom and apparently McMillan was not happy to see me. But oh well.
After the court case was closed, I again open record requested the body cams. Between the October, two November 2019 visits and the January 8, 9 and 10, 2020 visits. There are more than 15 hours of body cam footage. On the January 8, 2020 visit one elderly cow that was down and one calf was dead on the farm, for 5-7 days.
I have posted three body cams from the January 8 visit on my youtube page, they are marked age restricted, you must have a youtube account and be over 18 years of age to view these three videos. Simply because I refuse to allow anyone under 18 to see that type of material, although the video is never that close to the cow.
McMillan is on the phone twice. Especially 30 minutes into the one hour seven minute video (the last one), when he instructs Dr. Coley, DMV to put the cow down, which he does. The farmhand for McMillan (Gordon) is on two of the videos.
Fortunately, the cattle have been sold and are being take care of now.
McMillan made his first School Board 2020 appearance this Thursday March 26 this past week on a zoom electronic meeting.
McMillan is second row and third from the left at a @KnoxSchools Board meeting online
I plan to continue digging into this case file, the remaining body cam videos and the State of Tennessee Department of Agricultural Criminal Investigation case file as well.
