Owner of Chomp, Beechview's wayward gator, dodges cruelty charge, still faces neglect charges

A judge acquitted the owner of a 5-foot alligator that escaped from his home in 2019 of one count of animal cruelty on Thursday, but the other 37 charges against him remain in play.

Defense attorney Julia Gitelman on Friday intends to call several witnesses who she says will testify that her client, reptile vendor Mark McGowan, kept his reptiles and other animals in clean and adequate enclosures with food and water. He is on trial in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.

Assistant District Attorney Michael Siegert said he plans to challenge some of those witnesses on the grounds that the charges against McGowan stem from the conditions on June 11, 2019, and unless the witness was there, their testimony, he said, is irrelevant.

Those challenges will be left for Friday’s proceedings.

The conditions that day, according to witnesses for the prosecution, were inadequate and unacceptable. Witnesses included Officer Christine Luffey and Raymond Bamrick, leader reptile keeper at the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium.

The case against McGowan, of Beechview, began when an off-duty Pittsburgh police sergeant was walking his dog June 6 and spotted a loose alligator near the intersection of Rutherford and Seabring avenues.

Robert Connors, who now works for Amazon, testified Thursday that the alligator – about five or six feet long in his estimation – was hissing at them. Police and animal control officers arrived and wrangled the reptile, though no one came forward to claim him.

Luffey, who lives in Beechview and specializes in animal abuse and neglect cases, said when she heard about the alligator found on Rutherford, she suspected it might belong to McGowan. She said she’d become familiar with him since he’d moved to the neighborhood a few years earlier, though she conceded the truck labeled “Jungle’s Edge Exotics” in his driveway when he moved in led her to believe he might work in the adult entertainment industry.

A day after the alligator, later identified as Chomp, was found on the street, Luffey and Officer Tracy Schweitzer conducted a welfare check on the animals at McGowan’s home.

Luffey said the living room was filled with aquariums, cages, reptiles in storage bins and more. In the kitchen, she said, there were six rabbits hopping loose, and at least two alligators were in plastic bins.

“I’m not a reptile expert,” she said, “but I did not like what I saw that day.”

She said McGowan admitted the alligator found in the neighborhood was his, and he didn’t come forward because he is “famous in the reptile community” and he did not want his business to be affected by Chomp’s escape and seizure by police.

McGowan said the gator was loose while he was cleaning his enclosure, and Chomp managed to crawl onto the back of a couch and fall through the screen of an open window, landing about 10 feet below.

Luffey said McGowan spoke about the alligator like one would speak of a pet, though he said reptile was “mean as (expletive)” and he kept it docile by feeding it hot dogs.

The animal cruelty charge Court of Common Pleas Judge Thomas Flaherty found McGowan not guilty of after the prosecution rested its case hinged solely on Chomp. Gitelman argued that Chomp’s escape from the home didn’t meet the standards defined by state law: intentionally, knowingly or recklessly ill-treating, overloading, beating, abandoning or abusing an animal.

Of the 37 remaining charges, 36 are summary neglect offenses. Those stem from the alleged conditions inside the home. McGowan is also charged with reckless endangerment.

Luffey, Schweitzer and other officers executed a search warrant at the home June 11, 2019, and, upon guidance from Bamrick, the zoo’s reptile keeper, began systematically removing the reptiles and other animals Bamrick deemed to be living in dangerous and inadequate conditions.

Among those conditions he cited were a lack of water in some enclosures, feces-filled water in others, enclosures littered with feces and other dirt, and wholly inadequate housing. One example was of a Burmese python in a wood and chicken wire enclosure with no latch.

Bamrick said what he saw would be “unacceptable anywhere.”

In all, nearly three dozen animals were removed from the home, including more alligators, two pythons, a rattlesnake, multiple iguanas and other lizards, and multiple rabbits, guinea pigs, quails, hairless rats and turtles. One turtle was found dead in the container in which they were housed.

Dozens of other animals were left in the home – toads, frogs, other snakes, tarantulas and more — as they had adequate food, water and housing, witnesses testified. Only those feared to be in danger or neglected were seized.

The non-jury trial before the judge will continue at 11:30 a.m. Friday.