Suspect arrested in attack on cattle drive

A Camptonville man was arrested in connection with a cattle drive hit-and-run, the Sierra County Sheriff's Department said Saturday. Justin Phillip Lombardobarton, 19, was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, vandalism and animal cruelty for allegedly striking five cows, running over a cattle dog named Maggie and threatening to hit several horseback riders last Sunday. The horseback riders were participating in the annual Reader Ranch Cattle Drive near Henness Pass in Pike City, a town in southwestern Sierra County where Sierra, Nevada and Yuba counties meet near the Middle Fork of the Yuba River. Participants in the cattle drive and ranch owner John Reader described the attack to The Union newspaper in Grass Valley. A man in a white Jeep Cherokee drove past the cattle, stopped in the middle of the herd and then whipped his steering wheel to the right and gunned it, Reader told The Union. When riders tried to cut the driver off, he aimed toward them and then twice drove over Maggie, the ranch owner's best cattle dog who was trotting behind the cows...more