07/11/2025
A week ago today, Friday July 4, at approximately 9pm, witnesses reported seeing a pickup truck traveling at a high speed strike a horse on Ocean Pearl Road in Carova. Witnesses said the horse fell to the ground, but then got up and ran off into the brush. The driver of the truck did not stop. Law enforcement was called and deputies responded to the scene. The horse that was struck could not be located again that night.
Residents who witnessed the incident were able to give us a good description of the horses that had been in the area that night, and based on that we were able to narrow down the list of possible victims. Early Saturday morning our herd management team began searching for the potentially injured horse. By around noon on Saturday we had located thirteen of the stallions we believed could have been struck, and all were in fine condition with no visible injuries. We continued looking for the last two horses on our list, and around 1:30pm one of the people who witnessed the incident called to let us know there was a stallion in their yard who they believed may have been involved. Upon inspection, the stallion was indeed moving stiffly and did have a very swollen shoulder. He was not limping, did not have any open wounds, and overall seemed sore but fine. We took photographs to send to our vet and continued looking for the last horse on our list just to confirm he was ok, but we were unable to locate him Saturday or Sunday.
On Monday morning, our staff was able to locate the remaining horse and he had no visible injuries and was completely sound, so we are relatively confident that the stallion with the swollen shoulder was the horse who had been struck. We’ve been monitoring him as closely as possible this week and he has been improving. The swelling in his shoulder has gone down and he is moving and behaving normally; there is no indication that he has any internal injuries. There remains a small chance that he was not actually the horse who was struck, but at this point we have seen every stallion who normally lives in this 2-3 mile radius and he is the only one with injuries consistent with blunt force trauma.
He was extremely lucky. In the last ten years, eight horses have been struck by vehicles and he is only the second one to have survived. The odds are not in the horses’ favor and it’s highly likely that if you hit a horse, you are going to kill it. Please slow down and drive responsibly. In most of these cases speed and/or alcohol were involved and there is just absolutely no excuse for it. This disrespectful, dangerous behavior is causing irreparable damage to the herd and putting all other wildlife and people at risk too.
We’d like to remind everyone that it is against the county ordinance to injure a wild horse and not report it. It’s worth noting that the person who hit the horse on the beach a few weeks ago at least had the decency to stop, report the collision, and accept the consequences of their actions. If you are involved with or witness an emergency with a horse, please immediately call 252-453-3633 so that law enforcement can be dispatched and CWHF notified. We are on-call 24/7, 365, and time is of the essence in these cases. Leaving a horse to suffer is unimaginably cruel.
Our most sincere gratitude goes out to the residents who reported the collision and helped us with identifying the horse who was struck. Thank you for being such great stewards of the herd, and so supportive of our work. We’d also like to thank the telecommunicators at Currituck County Emergency Management for always being so kind and helpful in the midst of these horrific situations.
We’re so glad we didn’t have to bury another horse on Saturday, but the next time the phone rings in the middle of the night we probably won’t be so lucky. Please slow down and be careful.
If you have any information about this incident, please reach out to the Currituck County sheriff’s department: 252-453-3633
