A YOUNG girl has been traumatised after finding her pregnant horse dead in a field with bone protruding through its skin following an overnight break-in.
Bella Sapstead, seven, and her mother Lauren were alerted by a friend that their horses were wandering the paddock on the morning of Monday, May 16, despite having locked the animals safely away the night before.
The pair arrived at their stables in St Francis Fields, Rye, and were shocked to find that only two of the three pregnant mares could be located.
They split off separate ways to look for the missing horse, Alice, and found her dead with a large bone piercing her skin.
“My daughter was screaming so, I ran, and there was Alice with about six inches of bone sticking out of her leg. Very, very dead,” said Lauren.
“My poor daughter is scarred for life, she’s devastated. She asked me every day, ‘can’t we bring the baby back to life?’. She’s petrified. She won’t sleep by herself, crying every single night, she’s scared.
“She goes to the stable every day before school, mucks out her pony, and every day after school, but she doesn’t feel safe there any more. When we’re there she won’t go ten feet away from me.”
Lauren said she has invested great sums of money into the site and its regeneration but is now unsure if she will remain there.
She said there have been calls from a small number of people from the community for the stables to be used for another purpose, though there is no evidence this is linked to the death of Alice, or her horses being found out of their stables.
“I am ordering CCTV for the yard, and every gate that didn’t already have a padlock has now got one,” said Lauren.
“I do not want to be here any more. I should not have to feel like this. I would move somewhere else tomorrow, I hate it here.”
A spokesman for Sussex Police said: “Sussex Police received a report of a property interference and a dead horse at St Francis Fields, Main Street, Rye, at 9.45am on May 16, alongside a report of suspicious behaviour at a field in Dixsters Lane, Northiam.
“Officers from the Rural Crime Team are investigating. Any information regarding the incidents or any other similar suspicious behaviour please contact us online or via 101 and quote serial 369 of 16/05, for the attention of PC DADDY DD025.”
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