Horse Bones on Trail Spark Investigation

Los Angeles County animal control officials said they plan to investigate the remains of as many as 19 horses found in a rural area of Santa Clarita popular for horseback riding.

The remains, which are no more than bones and some horse hair, were discovered by a horse lover who says some of the animals apparently were destroyed because they had broken legs.

Ken Weaver, a 56-year-old archeology student at Cal State Northridge, said he found the bones while riding three miles south of Lost Canyon Road on a remote trail near the Angeles National Forest. It was difficult to tell from looking at the remains Tuesday how the animals died, although shotgun shells lay under oak trees and in a dry creek bed near where the bones were scattered.

Weaver said he believes that someone drove a horse trailer into the area, walked the horses in and shot them. “It’s just sick,” he said.

The county Department of Animal Care and Control on Thursday will send a veterinarian and an investigator to determine how long the remains have been there and the cause of death, a department spokesman said.

“This is very unusual,” said John Rozier, manager of the department’s Castaic shelter. “Most people pay a rendering company to remove a dead horse, or if they have a lot of land, they bury it themselves.”

It costs $125 to have a dead horse picked up in Santa Clarita and brought to a factory, where it is rendered into fertilizer, said a spokeswoman for D&D; Disposal of Vernon.

The remote area where Weaver found the bones may be a dumping ground for horse owners who do not want to pay to have their dead animals removed, said Bob Ballenger, a spokesman for the county animal control department.

It is a misdemeanor under littering laws to dump the carcass of a dead animal, said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the county district attorney’s office. The maximum penalty is six months in County Jail and a $1,000 fine, she said.

Weaver said Tuesday that he will reluctantly show county animal control officials the location of the remains. He said he is unhappy with the results of an investigation that they conducted this summer into allegations of animal cruelty by a local horseman.

Weaver complained in July that the man was abusing eight horses during a rodeo by using cattle prods and a whip on them, roping their forelegs and throwing them to the ground, and failing to treat hip cuts.

But county inspectors found no evidence of abuse.