Cockfighting suspect denies involvement despite having blood on clothes

By Ricardo Torres-Cortez

Thursday, Feb. 1, 2018 | 9:53 p.m.

An anonymous tipster led officers to an east valley property Sunday morning where they found clear indications that a cockfighting operation was occurring.

Dozens of people scattered when police arrived, finding hundreds of fowl on the property — 19 of them lifeless inside plastic trash bags, several others wounded. Inside a square “cockpit,” investigators found a dead rooster, blood turning the sand into mud.

The property owner denied knowing what was happening at the Judson Avenue location.

When Pablo Castellanos was questioned about the splattered blood on his pants and shirt, he simply said it must’ve come from another person running away when police showed up at 10:30 a.m. and “not his involvement in the fights,” according to a Metro Police arrest report released Thursday.

Police responded to the multihome property, near Lamb and Lake Mead Boulevards, about 30 minutes after the fights started, according to the report.

While most of the fight attendees were able to flee, officers arrested Castellanos, Angel Alcala Sanchez, his son, Angel Jr., and Erasmo Fallad.

The younger Sanchez admitted that he and his father had showed up for the cockfights to see them “firsthand,” police said. The elder Sanchez said they were only there to eat and that his son was “confused.”

Fallad was cooperative, saying he had paid $20 to attend the fights and had witnessed three bouts, one deadly, and the other two that ended when the birds were too injured to continue, police said.

Castellanos told detectives that he owned about 90 of the roosters on property, which he crossbreeds and sells, police said. He said his birds were “kind” and not the type used for fighting.

“He claimed not to know exactly what was going on at his property but that he knew large groups of people showed up regularly to his property, but he did not know why,” police wrote on his arrest report.

Besides the 332 birds, some found in cages, investigators found items consistent with cockfighting: spurs, boxing muffs and tethers, buckets of water where the roosters are soaked before they’re forced to battle for their lives, and a fake rooster, “a puppet with a metal handle that would be held by a trainer,” police said.

The “puppet” is used to build aggression and train the roosters, police said.

Pablo Castellanos was booked on 19 counts of willfully or maliciously torturing, maiming or killing an animal, while Fallad, and the father and son each face one count of being involved in fights between animals, police said.

Castellanos is being held at the Clark County Detention Center without the possibility of bail, jail logs show. He’s scheduled to appear in front of a judge Feb. 14.