A 9-year-old girl who fell in love with the goat she raised for the Shasta County Fair was heartbroken when deputies with a search warrant seized the furry cattle, taking it to be slaughtered.

Two years after the scandal broke, Shasta County agreed to pay $300,000 to the girl’s family to settle the legal dispute over the brown-and-white-eared goat named Cedar.

The young woman raised the goat for the 2022 fair as part of a program to teach young people how to care for farm animals. But when it came time to sell Cedar and turn him over for slaughter, Jessica Long’s 9-year-old daughter couldn’t do it.

Long took the goat from the fair, offered to pay the costs, and begged the fair officials to let her daughter keep Cedar. Instead, the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office deployed deputies, warrant in hand, to drive hundreds of miles across Northern California to find and retrieve the goat from Billy’s Mini Farm, where Long had taken it until the dispute has been resolved.

It is unclear who contacted and instructed the sheriff’s office to get involved.

The case caused a stir, and in a federal lawsuit, Long and her daughter alleged deputies wrongfully obtained a search warrant, seized Cedar, and turned the animal over to fair officials. Attorneys also accused county and fair officials of using law enforcement to intervene in what they said was a civil legal dispute over who owned the goat.

Cedar, who was purchased at the county fair for $902, was butchered, but it remains unclear who did it.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Dale A. Drozd approved the settlement requiring Shasta County to pay $300,000 to Long and her daughter to settle the federal lawsuit out of court.

“Unfortunately, this litigation cannot bring Cedar home,” said Vanessa Shakib, an attorney representing Long. “But the $300,000 agreement with Shasta County and the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office is the first step forward.”

The settlement brings a partial end to what has been two years of contentious litigation between Long and Shasta County and fair officials.

For the past two years, Shakib said fair and county officials have engaged in “obstructionist discovery tactics” to avoid answering key questions about what happened to the goat and what role officials played in capturing and destroying the animal.

“Years later, this case still has some unanswered questions,” she said.

After two years of reviewing texts, emails, phone records and filings, Shakib said county and fair officials have yet to clear who slaughtered Cedarwhat happened to his meat and who got the sheriff’s deputies involved in the dispute.

Text messages discovered during the federal trial suggest that corrections officials wanted to keep secret what happened to Cedar and who was involved.

“Kathy said ok, but no one needs to know about it,” BJ Macfarlane, livestock manager for the Shasta Fair Assn., wrote in a July 22, 2022, text message to Shasta Fair Executive Director Melanie Silva. In the message, he referenced Kathie Muse, a 4-H volunteer and county barbecue organizer. “Kathy and I are alone. He was killed and donated to a non-profit, if anyone asks.”

“We are a non-profit organization ,” Silva replied.

Long’s attorneys argued in court that finding out who killed Cedar and who contacted law enforcement is key to their case. Long and her attorney reached out before the goat was slaughtered and told the sheriff, fair and county officials they were disputing ownership of the goat.

However, someone decided to order Cedar to be seized and killed despite knowing a trial was coming, Shakib said.

County authorities deny any wrongdoing.

“The county did nothing wrong, but we recognize the risk and cost involved in going to trial, so we agreed to settle the case,” Christopher Pisano, a Shasta County attorney, said in an email. “We are happy to move on and put this case behind us.”

A Shasta County spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Silva, who remains CEO for the Shasta County Fair, did not respond to a request for comment.

Despite the partial settlement with Shasta County and the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, the lawsuit is still ongoing. Long and her daughter still have claims against Shasta County Fair employees and a 4-H volunteer.

Shakib said lawyers are still reviewing discovery, including phone records, to try to figure out what happened to Cedar.