The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is investigating the videotaped whipping of a sick carriage horse by its driver after it collapsed on a busy Manhattan street.
A spokesman for District Attorney Alvin Bragg said: “Animals should be treated humanely, and we take any incident of animal cruelty very seriously.” Doug Cohen this Tuesday, according to The New York Post.
The horse, named Ryder, fell to his knees in rush hour traffic around 5: 00 pm on August 10 on Ninth Avenue, near the intersection with Calle 45 West.
A video captured with a cell phone captured the driver Ian McKeever hitting the horse with his reins and repeatedly commanding, “Get up!” foot and was taken away in a New York Police Mounted Unit truck some 45 minutes later.
McKeever told police that Ryder was 13 years old and had just finished a 7-hour shift and a half, but a veterinary examination “determined that the horse had between 28 and 30 years instead of 13 years before mentioned”, according to the police.
In addition, the initial diagnosis was that Ryder “was malnourished, underweight and suffering from the equine neurological disorder EPM (Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis),” according to the report.
EPM is the result of a parasite that attacks the central nervous system and “can cause devastating and lasting neurological damage”, according to the Association American Equine Practitioners.
McKeever did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the Transport Workers Union, which represents carriage drivers, said in a statement Tuesday that “Ryder is retired at [a] private horse farm in the outskirts of New York, where he has a large comfortable barn.”
The union also reported that the unidentified owner of the horse “relinquished ownership of Ryder and awarded it to the farm manager.”
2022
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