Rider on a white horse takes wrong turn onto freeway, goes to jail

“So a horse walks onto the 91 freeway … no joke.”

It was an unusually flip beginning for a tweet from the California Highway Patrol.

But then, it was an unusually zany incident, once it was all over and no one was injured — not horse, not rider, nor arresting officer.

The tweet, posted at 6:51 p.m. Saturday by the CHP’s Santa Fe Springs office, continued in earnest to report that the man who rode his horse onto the freeway was arrested on suspicion of DUI.

“Don’t put yourself, your beautiful animal, or others in danger of being killed in traffic,” it concluded.

The suspect, identified as Luis Alfredo Perez of Placentia, was reported to have been celebrating his 29th birthday when he rode his white Arabian, Guera, onto the 91 Freeway at Paramount Boulevard.

Perez had exited at Downey Avenue and ridden into Bellflower when CHP officers, alerted by a 911 call, stopped him and administered a field sobriety test. He was recorded with a blood alcohol level of 0.21%, more than twice the legal limit, the City News Service reported.

Perez is being held in lieu of more than $50,000 bail, according to the L.A. County sheriff’s online records, which show additional cases pending against Perez.

In a follow-up tweet posted a few hours later, the CHP doubled down on its offbeat tone.

“We get a chuckle out of the interesting situations we encounter from time to time, but one thing the CHP does not do is ‘horse’ around with DUI,” the agency tweeted a few hours later.

Besides touching off a small media flurry, the tweets also stimulated a give-and-take with the public on the CHP’s Twitter account.

“What about the horse?” someone asked.

“‘Guera’ the White Arabian Horse was released to the suspect’s mother immediately after the arrest,” was the reply.

Then followed a light-hearted discussion of the law. A pair, identifying themselves as former law enforcement officers in their 70s and 80s, asked the CHP a bit sarcastically for a definition of the “D” in “DUI,” which they doubted would apply to horses.

“Is there really a horsey deuce section now?” they asked.

A David Sampson chimed in, saying, “I’m no expert, but I’m not seeing anything except motor vehicles that require a license described in 21050 VC,” referring to the California Vehicle Code.

Dead serious at last, the CHP referred the skeptics to the same section, “which states that a person riding an animal upon a highway is subject to all of the same rights and DUTIES as someone operating a vehicle upon a highway.”

Yes, there is a horsey-deuce section.

doug.smith@latimes.com

Twitter: @LATDoug

UPDATES:

12:05 p.m.: This article was updated with new information on Luis Alfredo Perez’s bail.

This article was originally published at 11:10 a.m.