Charges still pending after emaciated, dead horses found in El Paso County
Officials found two dead horses and 10 others emaciated at a property in El Paso County. Now, some neighbors are asking why it’s been a month for charges to be officially filed.
In a community where horses can be found on nearly every property, their well-being means everything to neighbors like Kelly Doyea.
“They should get priority, they can’t go and get their own food or water and my horses will eat better than I do and they also eat before I do,” Doyea said Monday.
That’s why she says she first noticed something was wrong when she saw just how skinny the owner’s horses were getting.
“He was usually there but he was kind of hovering and making sure we stayed away from those horses he had kind of set back,” she said.
Doyea says she was the one who called deputies to the property, but it was after Denise Kuremsky found the dead horses in stalls.
“My husband was just walking around and he came over to us and said, ‘Hey there is a dead horse in the stall.’ I asked him how the other horses looked, and he said skinny, and he continued to walk around and said, hey there is another dead horse,” she said.
Kuremsky says now that it’s been nearly a month since the discovery, they’ve been left wondering if anything will happen.
“I’ve been frustrated at times wondering if he’s going to get charged, when he’s going to get charged, what he’s going to get charged with,” she said.
Jackie Kirby with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office says just because the public hasn’t been notified of any new information, doesn’t mean the case isn’t still active.
“I can say there will be charges, we just don’t know what they are going to be until we get all of the information to make sure whatever we charge there will be probable cause to do so,” she said.
The District Attorney’s Office says investigators turned the case over to them last week, but they sent it back because they needed more information.
Kirby says they are working to get results from a necropsy test and hopes charges can be filed by the end of this week.
