Sheriff’s deputy shoots 2 horses

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Phil Stake
Staff writer

GALLUP — McKinley County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ron Williams shot two horses found wandering near New Mexico Highway 602 Saturday.

According to Williams’ report, he had been dispatched to the area, which is between mile markers 19 and 20, Friday around 5:35 p.m. He responded after “several” calls came into metro dispatch warning that five horses had made their way onto the road.

The 19 and 20 mile markers on N.M. 602 fall onto checkerboard land, notorious among law-enforcement for its murky jurisdictional status. Technically the first responders should have been Navajo Police Department. But when NPD officers failed to respond Friday, as did Navajo Resource Rangers, who are charged with governing open-range livestock on tribal land, McKinley County Sheriff’s office responded. Sgt. Williams successfully shooed the horses behind a highway fence.

But the horses apparently wandered back to the road Saturday around 4:30 p.m. Williams and a deputy responded this time, shooing two horses away from the road before a third ran across it and nearly collided with a motorist.

According to Williams’ report, he spoke with a property owner who said he knows what animals belong to his neighbors, and that the wandering horses do not. Williams wrote that the horses bore no markings or branding to identify the owner.

After leaving the area and driving north on N.M. 602 about three-quarters of a mile, Williams and the deputy found two more horses.

“We were not able to locate a safe location to put these two horses,” Williams wrote. “At the time the sun was setting, making their presence near the roadway an extreme hazard to the motoring public. I then put both horses down using my patrol rifle.”

Williams describes approaching the downed animals and finding one was still breathing.

“I discovered one still breathing and completed the task with my pistol with a shot to the head,” his report reads.

Williams wrote that Navajo Police and Resource Rangers had been contacted again, but again they did not respond.

Contacted Monday, a spokesperson for Navajo Resource Rangers said the department would likely not have killed the horses.

“The only time we put them down is if they are injured, and that’s only if the livestock owner cannot be found or notified and the horse or cow is suffering.”

As for why the department failed to respond, he said there were no available rangers.

“Right now we only have five or six officers on the whole reservation,” he said.