Johnston County man charged with animal cruelty after neighbors say he was running a puppy mill

A Johnston County man is charged with animal cruelty after neighbors say was running a puppy mill.

Bobby Gene Barbour, 62, is charged with not providing sustenance to a brown pit bull terrier named Hank.

Pictures taken by a neighbor show where the dog's collar had cut deep into its flesh.

The owner of the property who says Barbour sometimes lived in a travel trailer out back claims the dog was well cared for.

"They said the collar had growed in his neck but it hadn't because you could stick two fingers right there," Roy Lee Stanley told ABC11.

He added, "But where he had been running and jerking on the chain he got it raw trying to get to that dog that was in heat."

A video also shot by a neighbor shows several dogs roaming the yard and some chained up, including the female Stanley said was in heat.

In the video the man notes that one of the dogs in a crate is dead.

He also says he let three dogs out of a school bus that was full of trash.

Although some of the video shows water in containers, there was no sign of food.

One neighbor who wanted to remain anonymous was hopeful that more charges would be brought against Barbour for running a puppy mill.

But Stanley says that was not the case.

"He had some dogs that had puppies, you know. But it wasn't like you were saying a puppy mill or nothing. A dog got pregnant and the other one was on a chain."

Next door neighbor Michael Lee, however, said the dogs were not cared for properly.

"I'd see my paper chewed up outside. I heard different puppies, them whining and stuff like that."

Lee said he had seen the dog named Hank and that the injury to his neck was bad.

"If you're going to have an animal treat it, I mean treat it good. And, I mean if you ain't going to look after it you shouldn't even have had it," Lee said and added, "I mean if you're just having an animal to make money off of it that ain't right."

Although the investigation is still ongoing, authorities have not confirmed neighbors' allegations of a for-profit puppy mill.