By MARGIE TRAX PAGE - Staff Writer - mtrax@starbeacon.com
RICHMOND TOWNSHIP — Their hip bones sticking out and their fur shaggy, the two horses pastured just off Route 7 went from thin to skinny before Karen Powell’s eyes.
Powell, a school bus driver, drives past the pasture every day, four times a day. A horse owner herself, she took note of the horses’ pasture and their lack of body weight, and she noticed when they went missing altogether. Powell said she was shocked but not surprised when she saw they were dead, their bodies buried under nothing but snow and now exposed and visible from the road.
“Back when the weather was getting bad, I saw the horses, and I saw they were skin and bones,” she said.
An Ashtabula County Humane agent said the horses “did not suffer.”
The agent, who requested her name not be identified, said the horses were “very, very old,” and the owner never was cited for neglect.
The humane agent said it is illegal to bury a horse on farm property in Ohio and a removal service must be hired.
The horses belonged to Richmond Township Trustee Dave Ballentine's mother-in-law. Ballentine said he was not aware of the situation, but was troubled that the bodies were in the pasture.
“I don't know anything about (the horses),” he said in a telephone interview Thursday. “But I will do everything in my power to get the bodies of th ose animals where they belong. It is certainly not appropriate for (the bodies) to be left out that way.”
