Imagine going to work one day near an open field off Highway 65, and you see piles of bones.
“It's just sickening what's out there,” said Carlos Rodriguez. “It's a giant pile of 30-40 dead horses.”
Rodriguez works close by in an oil field when an elderly couple approached his co-worker on Wednesday, and told him someone dumped a bunch of horse carcasses the night before.
“There's quite a few horses that are bare skeleton, there's no meat, no anything left on them,” he said. “Down to horses that were just dumped a few days ago, still juicy and blood coming out of their bodies from the coyotes and animals picking at them and eating them.”
He says it smells like death and looks like it's been going on for more than a year. The couple told him they saw one horse dumped alive.
“As it was dumped out for the truck, it was still moving and kicking a bit,” he said. “Someone who could do that is just a truly sick person.”
He called animal control, and they're investigating it.
“We responded to the scene to try to make a determination of whether or not this is a natural occurrence or whether there is any criminal activity involved,” said Ron Brewster, interim divisional manager Kern County Animal Control.
Whatever the situation, Rodriguez wants the area cleaned up. He says the field is filled with old refrigerators, TV sets and boxes.
“There's a bunch of trash piled in with the horses,” he said. “This is throwing the horses out literally with the trash.”
Animal control says it opened the investigation to a few other departments in the county to help track down the person responsible. If you have any information about this dumping, you can call Kern County Animal Control at 321-3000.
