Horse Falls to Its Death During Air Rescue Attempt

An injured horse being lifted by helicopter out of the ravine where it had been trapped for a week tumbled to its death Friday when the harness broke.

The owners of the mare, Joseph Wheatley, 64, of Garden Grove, and his sons David, 40, and Mike, 41, had spent a week trying to find ways to rescue the 7-year-old quarter horse, whose name was Scotch. The horse had fallen into the ravine after a misstep on a narrow mountain trail.

“Everybody said, ‘No, there’s no way to get her out,’ ” Mike Wheatley said before the rescue attempt was made Friday. “ ‘There’s no way she’ll live; just put her down,’ they all said. But we’re horse people, and we’re not going to let her die if she don’t have to.”

The Marines at Tustin offered to send a chopper, and on Friday, one with a harness was carefully maneuvered into the small area.

Wheatley family members and friends cheered from the top of the ravine as two Marines, a veterinarian, David Wheatley and rancher Kent Nelson buckled a drugged, dazed Scotch into the harness. The CH-46 Sea Knight chopper hovered 40 feet above, although the mountainside was less than 10 feet from its front rotor.

After about two harrowing minutes, the horse was strapped in and the chopper flew away. But en route to the landing area about 10 miles away, the harness apparently broke and the horse fell. A television crew saw the fall from a helicopter nearby and captured it on videotape.

“We were following along the chopper’s left side, and it looked like something fell off, and the horse got to a funny angle,” reporter Peggy Holter said. “And then it fell to the meadow below.” She estimated that the horse fell “thousands of feet.”

Because of the remoteness of the ravine, the Wheatley family did not hear that the horse had fallen until they were off the mountain, almost an hour later.

“Oh, God, she fell, didn’t she?” David Wheatley asked as his wife approached his truck with a somber look. Just moments before, he, his brother and veterinarian Dr. Mike Tomlinson had been recounting the thrill of the airlift as they were driving along.

“Oh, this changes everything. This changes everything.”

Scotch had been brought to the area by David and Joseph Wheatley to help in the search for the lost 12-year-old Boy Scout.

“It was about 7 p.m. (Saturday), she was tired and she just went off the side,” David Wheatley said. “I was lucky; I was able to bail out. But she just kept going down; she looked like a basketball.”

Despite the length of the drop, the horse was alive when David Wheatley returned the next morning. He said she was badly bruised and cut, particularly around her head and one of her eyes, and she seemed to be limping.

“But she was still alive,” David Wheatley said, “and we had no way to get her out of there.”

For the next five days, David Wheatley made the 20-mile drive from their home to the mountain, then hiked 30 minutes and scaled down the shale surface of the ravine by rope to bring the battered horse food and water. In the meantime, Joseph Wheatley contacted law enforcement agencies, politicians and, finally, the military in search of help.

“They were great to come out here and risk their lives that way,” Joseph Wheatley said shortly after he and his sons heard that the horse had died.

David Wheatley hung his head as he walked toward a truck to go look for the horse’s body. “I prepared myself for this,” he said, removing his cowboy hat. “But it hurts. A horse becomes like part of the family. It hurts.”