Police horse tramples, injures woman

Houston Chronicle ^

[Chet 99]

HOUSTON — A 50-year-old woman watching the annual Pride Houston Parade was kicked and stomped by a police horse and will likely need plastic surgery.

Kirste Reimers didn't notice mounted police officers approaching, trying to keep pedestrians from spilling off the sidewalks into the street during Saturday night's parade, according to a Houston Chronicle report. She found herself being trampled, and suffered bruising over most of her body. Her chin was split open, teeth were knocked and her head was slammed on the asphalt. She spent the night in an emergency room.

...

Police said the officers and their horses were just doing their job.

[SeeSharp]

Police said the officers and their horses were just doing their job.

BS!!!

A rider is responsible for controlling his horse.

[packrat35]

Police said the officers and their horses were just doing their job.

Well, at least we know where we stand.

[skr]

Was she in the street or on the sidewalk?

[mylife]

Horses are pack animals. They aint fudgepacker animals.

Trouble was bound to happen

[SIDENET]

She's just lucky it wasn't a police unicorn.

[BykrBayb]

Police said the officers and their horses were just doing their job.

The Nuremberg Defense was discredited decades ago.

[Dudoight]

The horse was not out of control I am sure. Horses don’t want to step on people or anything else that obstructs their path. The woman must have gotten off the sidewalk inadvertently.

[HairOfTheDog]

Pride Houston Parade? As always, I wonder if there's more to the story.

Police horses are fairly hard to 'not notice approaching', by anyone who is even vaguely aware... Especially in light of the other reports from the area that said they were blowing whistles as well, and being fairly aggressive about crowd control.

Something tells me she was not just smiling and watching the parade, and something tells me she was told to move back.

[calex59]

Was she in the street or on the sidewalk?

Yeah, can't have people in the street, being in the street means you are fair game and should have the sh** trampled out of you by a police horse.

[LibFreeOrDie]

“Henry the Eighth is reputed to have said, ‘I don’t care what the people do, as long as they don’t do it in the streets and scare the horses.’”

Well, something in that gay pride parade scared ‘em!

[oldenuff2no]

Having been ranch raised and been riding horses for a living a good part of my life I know that there is part of this story left untold.
A horse naturally will step over an object as large as a person. I doubt seriously that the horse kicked the lady. The horses they use are about as bomb proof as they come. All of my experience tells me that the rider was in control and moved the horse into this lady as part of crowd control. It is damn near impossible not to hear or see a horse and rider approaching. I've tried to sneak up on cows and other horses thousands of times, it never works. There is something wrong with this story and taking it to mean that the horse did this all on it's own is absurd.