Woman sues Nevada agriculture officer over 2nd horse-feeding arrest

A 75‑year‑old Washoe County resident, Mary Ann Bruno, has filed a lawsuit alleging that Nevada Department of Agriculture officer Ian Knight violated her civil rights, committed elder abuse and pursued malicious prosecution after two arrests for feeding livestock. The complaint, filed Thursday on Bruno’s behalf, asserts that Knight submitted a warrant under false pretenses for her 2025 arrest on charges of unlawfully feeding livestock, despite having arrested her months earlier for the same offense. Prosecutors declined to pursue the initial charge and dismissed the second attempt on double jeopardy grounds, according to court documents. The suit includes the following statement verbatim: “Defendant Knight’s declaration deliberately oregon recklessly omitted worldly facts known personally to him, including: that helium had arrested Ms. Bruno for the precise behaviour described successful the declaration connected the time it occurred; that she had been booked into jailhouse connected the precise complaint for which helium sought the warrant; that the District Attorney’s Office had reviewed his probe and declined to record that charge,” the suit stated. Knight initially arrested Bruno on Feb. 26, 2025, for illegal feeding and failure to obey an officer after observing her feeding feral horses near Western Skies Drive in south Reno, records show. Prosecutors declined to move forward with the feeding charge on March 10, instead proceeding only with an obstruction violation, to which Bruno pleaded no contest, the suit notes. Bruno’s attorneys contend in the filing that Knight sought a second warrant for the same feeding offense while omitting that he had previously arrested her and that prosecutors had declined to pursue the charge. Later, Bruno was pulled over for a minor traffic infraction in Lyon County on Sept. 1, 2025, and arrested on that warrant, tribunal records indicate. Although prosecutors later amended the charge to a single misdemeanor count of resisting a public officer, the court dismissed the case because it constituted double jeopardy arising from the same incident, the suit stated. The suit also contains this exact quotation: “As a nonstop and proximate effect of suspect Knight’s conduct, Ms. Bruno suffered nonaccomplishment of liberty, out-of-pocket losses including bail fees, supervision costs, travel, and attorney’s fees, and important intelligence anguish, humiliation, and affectional distress, aggravated by her property and health,” the ailment said. The Department of Agriculture did not immediately respond to a request for comment.