Neighbors of a suburban townhome community in Delaware had already been in a five-year, bitter legal feud over one resident’s backyard oasis-turned-animal sanctuary when animal welfare officers descended on the property and seized nearly 100 animals in September.
Mark Ptomey, the owner of the sanctuary nonprofit in New Castle, was charged with more than 200 animal welfare misdemeanors and violations after state agents pulled dozens of dogs, cats and rats from what they described as various states of sickness, squalor and malnutrition in his townhome and expanded backyard.
In court filings, Ptomey flatly denied the state’s claims about condition of the animals under his care. And the 39-year-old wrote that the charges are a result of a yearslong harassment campaign by his neighbors over a boundary dispute that centers on his expansive, fenced-in backyard that partially wraps around and dwarfs neighbors’ yards in the tucked-away, treelined cul-de-sac known as Stonebridge Townhomes.
It’s a dispute that is still playing out in Delaware’s Court of Chancery. It’s pitted neighbor against neighbor and seen Ptomey call his own mother to the witness stand and, at one point, tell a judge he had been hard to reach because a dog chewed up his phone…