Surry, Va. — The indictments have been the talk of Surry, a hamlet a few miles from where Michael Vick had his kennel on Moonlight Road.

It was big news for a quiet town.

CURTIS COMPTON/AJC (ENLARGE)

Outbuildings painted black on the Surry County, Va., property of Falcons quarterback Michael Vick where authorities seized 66 dogs and equipment believed to be related to dogfighting.

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"The only thing we're known for is the nuclear power plant," said Lois Rowell, who was working the counter at the Virginia ham store. "Now we're going to be known for dogfighting."

She and her co-worker Vickie Jones said the news stories outlining charges against Vick and his friends turned their stomachs. They hope he is vigorously prosecuted if guilty.

"I don't have any sympathy for him. He's a grown man and he knows better," Jones said. "It is illegal and it is a horrible thing."

The town had a dogfighting arrest a few years go, but the charges were dropped because of problems with a search warrant, the women said. They wondered if the botched case had emboldened the dogfighters.

Other folks question why the federal government or Commonwealth authorities were putting so much energy into prosecuting dogfighting when so many crimes against people go unsolved.

"They need to be over in Newport News where the kids are shooting each other," said Reginald Evans. "What do you think is more important? A dog or a child?"

Evans was kibbitzing with buddies Lawrence Waller and David Brown at Rolfe Service Station on Wednesday. They agreed that dogfighting is wrong, but say they still think Vick is being persecuted.

"I never hold with dogfighting — I knew people who did it when I grew up, but I never did," said Waller, 57. "But I don't care for boxing or football. What's the difference between two guys getting in the boxing ring and beating their brains out and dogfighting? The only difference is you don't shoot the damn boxer who loses. It's all brutal."

Derrick Moore, a former animal control officer for the county, said he investigated complaints that Vick was mistreating pit bulls, but he never saw any evidence of it. "I could walk up to every one of those dogs, and I never saw a scar on any of them" said Moore, who helped investigate the previous dogfighting case.

Moore, whose family lives down the road from Vick's property, questioned the quality of the witnesses against Vick. "They're all in jail," he said.

But he didn't doubt that Vick and his friends could've been involved in the blooodsport.

"Those guys grew up in east Newport News, they grew up fighting dogs," Moore said, who has met the inhabitants of the house. "They moved out of the ghetto but the ghetto is still in them."

Moore and others said race is coloring the Vick controversy, with whites having a harder view of the quarterback and blacks feeling he's been targeted because he's a top black athlete, which guarantees headlines for investigators and prosecutors.

"You got to call it what it is: It's a racial thing," said Earnest Hardy, 56, who lives next to the former Vick property on Moonlight Road. "It is pitting neighbor against neighbor."

Hardy said he suspected the authorities targeted Vick and used the arrest of his cousin on a marijuana charge as an excuse to search the property. "Why did they bring 36 officers over an ounce of weed?" Hardy asked. "If [Vick] is guilty of fighting dogs, it's not the first time dogs have been fought, but this is the first time so many people have gotten involved or have pushed so hard," Hardy said.

But the grocery in Bacon's Castle, a town near the Moonlight Road property, customer Donald Edwards said dogfighting is a big deal and whoever practiced it should be prosecuted.

"I'm a hunter and I hunt with dogs, but I don't mistreat them," said Edwards, 58. "It's wrong, absolutely wrong, and if you're guilty, you should pay the price."