Arrest in Ride That Caused Horse’s Death
Tuesday, December 5, 1995 · Page A18
BAY AREA REPORT — SAN FRANCISCO
A 27-year-old Oakland man was arrested for drunk driving and other
crimes after he allegedly stole a horse from the stables in Golden Gate
Park and caused the animal’s death by riding it into the path of an
oncoming truck, police said yesterday.
Three veterinarians tried for several hours to get the injured horse,
a 6-year-old black gelding named “Junior,” back on its feet after the
8:15 p.m. accident Sunday at Fulton Street and 46th Avenue. Eventually
they had to put the animal to sleep.
Police arrested Tyrone McDonald for grand theft, cruelty to animals
and drunken driving.
The hooves of horses!
Oh! witching and sweet
Is the music earth steals from the iron-shod feet;
No whisper of lover, no trilling of bird,
Can stir me as much as hooves of horses
Have stirred.
— — Will H Ogilvie
Drunk Driving Does Not Apply to Horses
Friday, September 24, 2004
3:26:00 PM EDT
Feeling Mischievous
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (AP) —The state Supreme Court ruled that
Pennsylvania’s drunken driving law can’t be enforced against people on
horseback, a decision that inspired the dissenting justice to wax
poetic.
The court ruled Wednesday in a case against two men in Mercer County
in 2002. Riders Keith Travis, 41, and Richard Noel, 49, were charged with
drunken driving along with a man driving a pickup who allegedly
rear-ended the horse Travis was riding away from a bar on a dark country
road.
All three men failed field sobriety tests, police said, but a judge
threw out the charges against Noel and Travis after they argued that the
word “vehicles” in the state’s drunken-driving law doesn’t apply to
horses.
Prosecutors said the code specifically includes people riding animals.
But the majority justices cited a similar case in Utah, where judges said
such a statute is confusing and too vague about which regulations would
apply to animals as well as vehicles.
Justice Michael Eakin, who is fond of writing rhyming opinions, summed
up the lone dissent with two stanzas mimicking the theme song of “Mister
Ed” — a 1960s TV sitcom about a talking horse:
“A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
but the Vehicle Code does not divorce
its application from, perforce,
a steed as my colleagues said.
“It’s not vague,” I’ll say until I’m hoarse,
and whether a car, a truck or horse
this law applies with equal force,
and I’d reverse instead.”
Drunk Horse-And-Buggy Driver Causes Crash
IGA, Latvia – Police in eastern Latvia were trying to determine
Wednesday what charges to bring against a drunken horse-and-buggy driver
who caused a drunken motorist to crash into a ditch, flipping his
car.
The accident happened just before midnight Monday near Kraslava, 140
miles east of the Latvian capital, Riga. The driver of the
horse-and-buggy made an illegal turn onto a main road when he should have
yielded to an oncoming car, said Kraslava police spokeswoman Ingrida
Nevedomska.
To avoid crashing into the horse-and-buggy, the driver of the car, a
Volkswagen Golf, veered into a roadside ditch, flipping his car,
Nevedomska said. The driver was not seriously hurt.
Police, who did not release the names of the drivers, administered
breathalyzer tests and determined they were both legally drunk, Kraslava
traffic police chief Uldis Ornicans said.
The driver of the car was fined $830 and had his license revoked.
But police were unsure what to do about the horse-and-buggy driver –
only motor vehicles and bicycles are covered under the country’s drunk
driving laws.
“How do you ticket a guy driving a horse-and-buggy?” Nemedomska
said.
Ornicans said the man at the reins would probably be charged with
having caused an accident but declined to specify what penalties he might
face.
As for the horse, Nevedomska said, it seemed sober.
