MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. - Detectives with the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office said they found  several thousand  roosters as part of a massive cockfighting bust that began with a weekend FBI raid at a site in the county's semi-rural Horse Country enclave. Leer en español MDSO deputies took at least one person into custody in connection with the case. According to an arrest report, FBI agents conducting a raid at the property, located at 12300 SW 51st St., notified MDSO at around 1 p.m. Saturday that they found a possible animal fighting operation. The report doesn't make clear whether the federal search had anything to do with suspected animal fighting. An MDSO detective responded and conducted a walkthrough of the 10-acre property and  observed several thousand game fowl roosters  and  numerous  enclosed cockfighting training rings, along with  vitamins, syringes, medication and rooster agitators,  the report states. Authorities said detectives received a search warrant at around 8:40 p.m., but left the property under the watch of patrol deputies and returned the next morning to further search it. Deputies said while searching the property Sunday morning, they found two men  who breached the secured perimeter of the property.  Both men ran and jumped a fence, but deputies said they were able to find one of them, Carlos Rafael Lezcano, walking at a nearby nursery. What the 52-year-old said to deputies was redacted from the publicly-released arrest report, but investigators noted that one of the items they found was  a ledger with his name on it.  They arrested Lezcano, who lives about a mile away from the site, on charges of animal cruelty, evidence tampering, animal fighting and resisting without violence. Records show Lezcano was being held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on a $10,500 bond as of Monday morning.
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