Law enforcement authorities are investigating the shooting deaths of 14 horses, hunted down while grazing in a woodsy area of eastern Kentucky. Three of the mares were pregnant, and other slain animals included young colts and fillies, according to authorities. One animal still had grass in its mouth.
“I’ve done rescue for a long time. I’ve seen some pretty bad things,” Megan Goble, whose family owns some of the open space where the horses were killed, told National Public Radio. “This was different. This was a very large act of evil, for lack of a better term. I mean, there’s no other way that I can describe it.”
The horses were found earlier this week in a remote wooded area around a rehabilitated strip mine near Prestonburg where horses have roamed for years. Tonya Conn of Dumas Rescue, which has worked with the horses, told CBS affiliate WYMT-TV that the way the carcasses were scattered indicated they were hunted down. (You can hear her comments in the video clip above.)
“Seeing them gunned down is ... it’s beyond horrific,” she said.
Floyd County Sheriff John Hunt told WYMT that the scene “looked like a battleground for just horses.” It’s a “very cruel act of somebody who just apparently had nothing else to do” and decided to “shoot down horses,” he added.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Hunt said. “We’re in a region where horses are still part of our daily life.”
A $20,000 reward is being offered for information leading to those responsible.
Hunt said his office has received concerned calls from area residents as well as from animal lovers in other states, and police officers offering their expertise. “People have gone out of their way to show their kindness and concern for these horses.”
Efforts are being made to gather surviving horses to protect them. Volunteer groups have offered to find homes for them.
Hunt described the free-roaming horses as essentially wild, though at least some of them are owned.
“They’re not pets, you know,” Hunt told NPR. “They probably never had a bridle or never had a saddle put on them. It’ll take some trained people to go back and corral these horses and then lead them a couple miles off of the mountain where we can load them in a truck.”
People occasionally complain about the horses as nuisances, said Hunt. But the horses gunned down were far too remote to bother anyone.
“The ones that were killed were obviously bothering no one,” Hunt said. “They were back grazing on abandoned coal property, a mining site, near no one.” The sheriff said locals like to travel to the strip mine area to spot the horses.
