HORRY COUNTY, SC (WBTW) – A family in Galivants Ferry is trying to find out why someone would shoot and kill their horse.
Brooke Gasque says in October, she bought her family’s first horse, a ten-year-old fleabitten-gray Appaloosa named Sky.
Gasque’s five-year-old son Bentley loved riding, feeding and grooming Sky right away.
“Money couldn’t have touched what he had with Sky,” Gasque said. “Not many five-year-olds can walk right out in an open pasture, and put their hands on her, and walk her to the gate and put a lead line on her for ride time.”
Gasque says that’s what makes what she found Tuesday morning heartbreaking.
“I ran as hard as I could to her, I fell down on my knees beside her and I touched her,” Gasque said. “I touched her and I looked in her eyes. I knew she was already gone.”
Sky had been shot in the right hip overnight and died. Gasque says the family last saw Sky at about 8:30 p.m. Monday, before going to sleep.
Sky was the family’s only horse and Gasque says her son couldn’t believe what happened.
“He ran around the house twice looking for her and he came back,” Gasque said. “He looked at me and he said, ‘Momma, it’s not funny anymore. I just want to know where my horse is.’ I said, ‘Buddy, she’s in Heaven.'”
An Horry County police report says surveillance video from Gasque’s relatives’ house shows what appears to be the muzzle flash of a gun firing into Sky’s pasture at 12:16 a.m. Tuesday.
Gasque says she put up a $500 reward, which has grown to nearly $2,000 through donations, to find who killed Bentley’s horse.
“There’s no way it was an accident,” she said. “It’s not hunting season. You just didn’t ride by somebody’s house and mistake an 800- to 900-pound horse for a deer.”
There’s also money being raised to help the family buy a new horse.
Starting Friday, the Conway National Bank in Aynor will start taking donations in two accounts for a reward fund and a new horse fund.