Eight horses were murdered — literally burned alive — in an anti-gay hate crime during which the words, “fags are freaks” and “burn in hell” were spray painted on the front of a locked Ohio barn Easter Sunday. The flames were so hot they melted a tractor inside. One of the horses was just a few weeks old, another was pregnant.
The McConnelsville, Ohio resident who owns the barn, Brent Whitehouse — whom reports say is an openly-gay insurance agent — said, “I couldn’t get the door open I could still hear the horses kicking and I tried as hard as I could to get them out and I just couldn’t get them out in time,” adding, “The barn I can rebuild, but the bond I had with those horses can’t be replaced.”
“I knew the way she was acting Saturday and Sunday that she was ready,” Whitehouse said. “My one dog was acting funny, and I looked out the window and saw this orange glow coming from the barn. I ran out there, but the doors of the barn wouldn’t open and suddenly, flames were shooting up through the roof. That barn was gone in five minutes,” the Zanesville Times Recorder reported, adding,
Whitehouse, a horse trainer and breeder, and owner of an insurance company in McConnelsville, said he is still in shock over losing Elvis, Barney, Floyd, Princess and her week-old foal, Buddy, Love, Bella and Ethel. The value of the horses was hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“Each one of them was so special,” Whitehouse said. “I’d come home from a long day at the office and go to the barn and be with them for hours. They just knew how to relax me and make me laugh.”
Ethel, Whitehouse, said, reminded him of the character of the same name on “I Love Lucy.”
“She was such a funny horse,” Whitehouse said. “She acted so silly.”
Floyd was a very large horse who “didn’t let things bother him.”
“He just plodded along with you,” Whitehouse said. “He was huge, but wouldn’t hurt anything or anyone.”
Whitehouse teared up remembering Buddy.
“He was only a week old,” Whitehouse said. “I just had him and his mother in the arena and he was coming up and smelling me and checking me out. He was cute as a button.”
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