Authorities are seeking whoever butchered two horses and left their remains at a roadside in Lee County, Florida.

Lieutenant Scott Lineberger, public information officer for the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, said deputies responded to a call from passersby who found the remains at a Lehigh Acres roadside on March 18. Deputies from the sheriff’s agricultural crimes unit also responded to the incident, he said.

Lineberger said all the meat had been removed from the horses’ bones with only the rib cages remaining; the remains suggested the horses were dismembered in a way consistent with slaughter, he added.

“Whoever did this knew what he was doing,” Lineberger said