TURTLECREEK TWP. — An outrider did her best to save a horse that ran into a pond and drowned at Miami Valley Gaming and Racing Monday evening, according to witnesses.
Driver Kanye Kauffman was riding behind his horse, “He’s a Perfect 10” in a race Monday evening when another horse broke stride, leading three other horses getting into a chain reaction crash.
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Kauffman was knocked off the sulky cart in the harness race and the horse took off.
An outrider — a person on horseback at the track during races — caught the animal, but it broke loose and ran into one of the ponds in the infield of the track, said Bill Crawford, executive director of the Ohio State Racing Commission.
Rescue efforts failed, and the horse drowned in the pond.
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“When the horse first went in, it stopped at the shallow part of the water,” said Jeff Deems, whose horse was involved in the mishap.
The outrider, Ashley Holliday, then jumped in to rescue the horse.
“She had the horse’s head above water for a little bit. She was doing her best, but then as the horse started to struggle and fight, it worked its way to toward the middle of the pond,” Deems said. “If it would have worked it’s way the other way or stayed shallow, she could have maybe helped it or something could have went a little bit different.”
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A tactical rescue dive team was called to the racino Monday night after the last two races were run to help recover the drowned horse.
“We were call primarily to recover the horse,” said Mike Jameson, assistant fire chief in Turtlecreek Twp.
Jameson said the dive team from the Warren County Tactical Rescue Team spent more than an hour searching the retention pond for the horse.
Starting about 8 p.m., four divers rotated in two-person teams due to the cold water and difficulty of navigating underwater in the darkness.
“You might as well close your eyes, you can’t see anything,” Jameson said.
Although racino staff told the divers where the horse went down, locating “something even as large a horse” was difficult.
About 9:15 p.m., racino staff used a winch to pull the body, strapped by the dive, from the lake, Jameson said.
On Wednesday, Jameson was wrapping up the cleaning and reorganization of the dive gear.
Jameson, a township firefighter for more than two decades, said this was his first time with the dive team recovering a dead horse.
He said the team had rescued live horses, cows and dogs after they fell through ice and recovered dead human bodies.