Posted on 03/22/2007 8:59:06 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
VENICE, Fla. -- A 13-year-old Venice girl died after being thrown from a horse.
Mary Angela Jaquith was practicing for a jumping competition at her family farm on Saturday when another member of her riding club had a problem with a horse. Jaquith saddled up to see if she could help.
But the horse reared back, threw Jaquith to the ground and rolled over her.
Jaquith's mother, Debra is a former nurse. She rushed to the girl's side and found her unconscious and bleeding heavily.
Jaquith was airlifted to All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg.
Despite her riding helmet, Jaquith suffered a fracture to the base of her skull. She died on Sunday.
A Mass of Christian burial is scheduled for today in Venice.
That's ok. I'm kind of surprised at your response too. People have different opinions, depending on where they are coming from I guess.
Hey, can you follow up on Jr? :')
You can't keep your little ones in cotton wool, but Oh! it's hard.
If he was just a stall biter, that's one thing. But if only 2 people could ride him, that points to a more serious temperamental problem. It doesn't sound like a normal "fall over the fence" accident, but without knowing more facts we can't say for sure.
But if, after that accident, he had dumped another rider and then jumped on top of him, there would be a liability problem. Unless the rider knew of his temperamental problems and his tendency to jump on people . . . then there might be an assumption of the risk. But it would be a jury issue for sure, and trials are expensive . . .
I'm surprised with your concern for safety that you would ride alone. My daughter is an accomplished rider, and we don't let her ride alone. Never know when something unexpected will happen and you will need assistance.
I would say more jockeys (both flat and jump) are killed than in any other horse sport.
OK - Two people at that barn could ride him. That doesn't mean they were the only two people in the world capable of it, it's a rule that they made. So he was not a lesson horse. There's lots of horses boarded at stables that are not to be ridden by anyone other than the owner or a particular trainer, most horses are not just 'available for the taking' by any of the lesson kids.
He was apparently a biter, but that isn't what got him in trouble.
I don't know what about the accident doesn't make it sound like a typical refusal accident where a horse skids or jumps through a fence.
Quote: "One day, not long before I got there, Patrick was taking Junior around the ring, over some basic jumps. They approached the Wall, which was a bricky-looking jump about three feet high.
Junior decided at the last minute that he didn't want to clear the Wall, so he stopped short and let Patrick go over without him. After Patrick landed, then Junior decided to jump after all.
He landed on Patrick, and after that there was only one man who could ride him. Ugh."
I know you're looking from a legal point of view... and as someone who jumps horses yourself, I'm particularly surprised at your take on this.
Xena... you've given us quite the side issue to discuss here :~)
But if I were a plaintiff's lawyer, I'd take the case!
Check out this video. This man makes standing on your horse a thing of art:
http://www.dailymotion.com/visited/search/lorenzo/video/x19nep_lorenzo-the-flying-french-man
Against who? Whose fault is it?
You're right... he does. :~)
As far as I know, the establishment is no more.
It had what we like to call a checkered past (about which we found out well after I was out of there) . . . the stable owner was fond of little girls, and his wife was beaten with a hammer during a robbery. (I can't remember if she died or was just incapacitated.)
I Googled the farm name and it doesn't exist online, except in one riding instructor's bio. Maybe I could e-mail the instructor and see what she knows.
Yikes. Maybe we don't want an update after all.
It would be the fault of the owner of the horse for continuing to let people ride it, assuming it happened again and the rider was not informed of the horse's history.
Again, IF it wasn't a typical "horse shut off" case and there was some evidence that the horse deliberately jumped onto the guy. (Doesn't take much.)
I don't mind horses that shut off as much as I mind horses that rear, though. If one makes a habit of that I strike him off my list. Too dangerous.
The way the story was told to me, it portrayed Junior as doing it on purpose. I do seem to remember he had a reputation for bad behavior beyond offing Patrick.
Junior was definitely a liability to little curious hands, which every pre-teen girl has in regard to horses.
However, you are very likely right that he was probably restricted as to who was ALLOWED to work with him, not who was CAPABLE of doing so.
Oh, it ended up all sorts of icky. My best friend and I were VERY glad to have disassociated ourselves from it a few years before all that went down.
You're going to decide a horse deliberately jumped on the guy when he wiped out a fence?
CindyDawg... Update: I'd let that stallion on my place but I won't allow any lawyers. ;~)
I'll make an observation here -- barns where they have "a checkered past" tend to have problems in all areas.
My own experience bears this out. You do not want to see a barn where you ride show up in the appellate reporters, but that's just what happened one day as I was reading through the advance sheets.
I had had a bad feeling about the owner of this barn, just didn't trust him, but figured that (1) I knew my way around horses and wasn't going to get in any trouble on his school horses; and (2) I wasn't buying a horse from him, so he couldn't cheat me.
Once I saw that, I changed barns (he got socked with a large verdict, including punitives, against one of his own boarders for cheating her on a horse). A guy who'll cheat his boarders will do ANYthing. And at that time, my oldest child was just old enough to start being interested in horses and wanting to learn to ride.
I found a much better trainer . . . still with her after all these years!
The US Pony Club has some stats on their kids while riding English:
http://ponyclub.org/pdfs/spring20042.pdf
Here is another study:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Retrieve&list_uids=11958244&Dopt=Citation
Injury during contact with horses: recent experience with 75 patients at a level I trauma center.
• Griffen M,
• Boulanger BR,
• Kearney PA,
• Tsuei B,
• Ochoa J.
Department of Surgery, University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA.
BACKGROUND: The objective of this study was to examine equine-related trauma at a trauma center servicing a region in which there is significant contact between horses and humans.
METHODS: Data were collected on all patients admitted to the University of Kentucky Medical Center from January 1994 to December 1998 for treatment of horse-related injuries.
RESULTS: Seventy-five patients were admitted to our center after injuries due to contact with horses (0.75% of all trauma admissions). There were 42 men (55%). The mean age was 37 years (range, 3 to 81 years). The majority of patients (67/75) were injured during recreational activities, and most fell or were thrown (40/75). Only 14% of patients were wearing helmets.
The most common injuries were extremity fractures and head injuries, but thoracic and abdominal injuries were not rare. Of the 75 patients, 34 required surgery. Five patients (6.7%) died, all of head injury. During the study period, 11 people died in Kentucky due to contact with horses.
CONCLUSIONS: Injury due to contact with horses is uncommon even at a center servicing a region with a large equine population. However, injuries are often serious and lead to significant morbidity and occasional mortality. Prevention of death from horse-related trauma is synonymous with prevention of head injury.
I also am acquainted with a horse that did stuff like that. He is one of the horses who dumped me on purpose. He also tried to stomp on me a couple of times and charged me in the pasture -- I had to bounce a bucket off his nose to get him to leave me alone.
My trainer bred him - he was the product of her old Tbred stallion (who was a WONDERFUL horse - she didn't let the little kids handle him but they would have been perfectly safe on him or around him) and one of her warmblood mares (I have ridden her and she's a little hot but not vicious at all and a sweet mama.) He just turned out bad. Not too long after he dumped me and kicked somebody else, she sold him to an experienced rider to train for 3 day. He was absolutely beautiful and an extremely athletic and talented horse, but he had a screw loose.
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