11 Youths Accused of Killing Horse

Ten boys and a girl are accused of chasing a quarter horse across the fenced-in pasture where it was grazing, then beating it to death after it broke its leg.

“They just don’t have any reason for what they did,” Hardin County Sheriff Mike Holzapfel told the daily Beaumont Enterprise newspaper. “And the way the judicial system is set up, we can’t even lock them up in the county jail.”

The children, ages 8 to 14, were charged Tuesday with felony criminal mischief after they were overheard bragging about the beating, sheriff’s deputy Darrell Werner said Wednesday. They were held in a county juvenile detention center.

The horse, named Mr. Wilson Boy, was chased last Thursday into a barbed-wire fence, where the horse became entangled and broke its leg, Werner said. The children beat the animal until it died; one even stuck a stick up its nostril, he said.

The 14-year-old horse, which was owned by Charles Woodard, athletic director at Silsbee High School, was valued at $10,000.