Posted on 03/21/2005 11:28:13 AM PST by BenLurkin
PALMDALE - A 14-year-old died Saturday in Lancaster after she was trampled by a horse at a home stable near Quartz Hill. The accident happened around noon when Ashley Hyland, a student at Joe Walker Middle School, was working with a horse at a friend's house.
Witnesses told investigators Hyland was walking the horse around a ring, in the back of a home off 40th Street West and Avenue N, when she was kicked and trampled. Hyland did not live at the property.
"Somehow she became entangled in the rope she was leading the horse on" said Dan Aiken, an investigator with the Los Angeles County Department of Coroners.
Hyland apparently tripped on the rope and fell by the horse.
The horse stepped on Hyland, causing massive injury to her stomach and head, Aiken said. The girl was also dragged along the ground briefly, he added.
Paramedics took Hyland to Antelope Valley Hospital where she died shortly after, Aiken said.
The death appeared to be accidental, investigators said.
Sgt. Vincent Burton of the Palmdale Sheriff's Station, said he was not sure who the horse belonged to.
It was not clear Sunday how much experience the girl had with horses.
Westside Union School District Superintendent Regina Rossall said she was called by investigators Saturday to help with finding emergency contacts.
Rossall said Sunday the district is preparing to help students at Joe Walker Middle School when they return to class today.
A crisis team has already been mobilized, she said. The team is made up of psychologists, counselors and teachers "who have had some training in dealing with this kind of crisis," she said.
Rossall said the crisis team will be at the school all day Monday and additional days if needed.
See? This is what happens when you don't have common-sense horse control laws. When we allow assault horses like this on our streets, our children suffer.
Is that a joke?
Ban horses, except for enough kept strictly confined for continued breeding of mules.
I have never met a horse that didn't want to kill me. Many have tried, but I survived.
Prayers for the young girl and her loved ones.
Prayers going up and blessings coming down. May her family be comforted in their loss and my her soul be accepted into an Eternity in Heaven!
"Ban horses, "
which doesn't fit your tagline at ALL!!
This business of organized grieving and hand-wringing is turning the children of America into a bunch of simpering wimps.
I thought horses didn't do stuff like that. Horse people have told me that horses will stop before they step on people.
bttt
That's really why this doesn't happen very often. Most horses would go out of their way to avoid stepping on anyone, and most are pretty compliant to our wishes, if they have been handled well. Horses can and do sometimes walk right into you if they haven't been taught good manners, but most wouldn't actually stomp you. There just isn't much to go on here about how she got so tangled in the line and went down in the first place. The horse may have just spooked at her, or the tangled line, or something else all together to have brought this on.
PING
It's not often where you find people who think the trampling death of a child is so damn funny.
It's too bad there isn't more to go on, so we could learn more from it. It makes a difference if this was a three year old stud colt who wasn't even halter trained, or a recently adopted wild mustang, or if it was a horse she reasonably should have been able to handle but something went very wrong.
When are they gonna put the horse down?
Nearly this same accident happened to me when I was 15 (well, I was riding the horse when it threw me off, not just walking it around..) I wish someone had told the horse that it wouldn't step on me.
If it had hit me just a couple of inches one way or the other, it would have killed me.
I wouldn't necessarily leap to the conclusion that is what happened here, many women handle stallions just fine, every week of the month. I had a stallion, and while it was never good to be complacent ever, he didn't 'go crazy'.
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