Over a dozen horses left to rot in barn
If there is a hell on earth for horses, Diana Ragula uncovered it.
“When the dog got loose, I came in here to get him and I see bones,” Ragula.
It was inside a barn a few dozen yards from her house.
Ragula lifted up the tarp and found it was an entire skeleton of a horse left to rot.
She called KRDO after she called the sheriff’s office. Before deputies arrived, Ragula showed KRDO her gruesome discovery…and more.
She removed tarp, after tarp. Sometimes there was more than one body of horses underneath.
“There’s way more than I thought,” Ragula said after uncovering more than a dozen bodies.
Most of the horses seemingly left to rot in the same spot where they laid down to die.
“They’re just everywhere,” Ragula said.
There are eight horses still alive. Some appeared to be malnourished with their ribs showing. Many suffering from foundering of their hooves; four of the horses were inside the barn, walking around the bodies of the dead horses, living in feet of manure that looks to have been collecting without cleaning for years.
“I’m pissed. I’m pretty mad and these people just don’t seem to care,” Ragula said.
About two hours after they were called, El Paso County deputies arrived. Soon after, KRDO and Ragula were forced to move back from the barn as a deputy taped it off as a crime scene.
The Sheriff’s office hasn’t responded to requests for information about the investigation.
As for Ragula, she says she just regrets that she hadn’t seen something sooner.
“They’re silent dying. Nobody hears anything. If I’d known about this before, I’d of been down here before,” Ragula said.
KRDO has contacted the owner of the horses. She said she was talking with deputies and declined to comment. Newschannel 13 also discovered a website registered to the owners offering to sell “cutting horses.”
